LIBRARY 

University  of 

California 

Irvine 


PR 


S77 
V.I 


, 


THE   ESSAYS    OF 
SIR     LESLIE    STEPHEN 

(Literary  and  Critical) 

Authorized  American  Edition,  to  be  complete  in  ten 
volumes,  printed  from  new  type. 

Free  Thinking  and  Plain  Speaking 

i    Volume. 

Hours  in  a  Library 

4  Volumes. 

Studies  of  a  Biographer 

4  Volumes. 

English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century 

i    Volume. 


The  Life  and  Letters  of  Leslie  Stephen 

By  Frederic  William  Maitland 
Octavo. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK  LONDON 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 


By 

Leslie  Stephen 


In   Four    Volumes 
Volume  I. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

Cbe  •Rnicftcrbocker  press 

1907 


Ube  ftnicfcerbocber  press,  flew 


I  HAVE  to  acknowledge  with  many 
thanks  the  permission  of  the  proprie- 
tors of  the  National  Review  (in  which 
most  of  the  following  articles  appeared) , 
of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  and  of  the 
Cornhill  Magazine,  to  republish  these 

studies. 

LESLIE  STEPHEN. 

June,  1898. 


Contents 


PAGB 


NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY              .                             .  i 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  EDITORS                                .  35 

JOHN  BYROM          ......  69 

JOHNSONIANA        ......  98 

GIBBON'S  AUTOBIOGRAPHY       .          .                   ,  i38 

ARTHUR  YOUNG J76 

WORDSWORTH'S  YOUTH  .         .         .         .212 


STUDIES  OF  A   BIOGRAPHER 


National  Biography 

MR.  Sidney  Lee  has  recently  (February  1896) 
delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution  a  lecture 
upon  National  Biography.  No  one  has  a  better 
right  to  speak  upon  the  subject.  He  has  been  sole 
editor  of  the  later  volumes  of  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  and,  as  I  can  testify,  had  a 
very  important  share  in  preparing  every  previous 
volume.  He  spoke,  therefore,  from  considerable 
experience,  and  if  I  were  to  deal  with  his  subject 
from  the  same  point  of  view,  I  should  have  little 
more  to  do  than  say  "ditto  "  to  most  of  his  remarks. 
I  would  not  contradict  even  his  statistics, although, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  differ  to  some  extent  from 
my  own  calculations — I  put  that  down  to  the 
known  perversity  of  arithmetic  in  general.  But 
I  also  think  that  in  dealing  briefly  with  a  large 
subject,  he  left  untouched  certain  considerations 
which  are  a  necessary  complement  to  his  argument. 
I  shall  venture  from  this  point  of  view  to  say 

VOL.  I. — I.  I 


2  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

something  of  a  matter  in  which  I  have  some 
personal  interest. 

When  the  old  Biographia  Britannica  was  coming 
out,  Cowper  made  the  unpleasant  remark  that  it 

was 

A  fond  attempt  to  give  a  deathless  lot 
To  names  ignoble,  born  to  be  forgot. 

If  that  was  a  fair  judgment,  what  are  we  to  say 
to  the  modern  work,  which  includes  thousands  of 
names  too  obscure  for  mention  in  its  predecessor? 
When  Mr.  Lee  speaks  of  the  "commemorative 
instinct"  as  justifying  his  undertaking,  the  enemy 
replies  that  a  very  small  minority  of  the  names 
deserve  commemoration.  To  appeal  to  instinct 
is  to  repudiate  reason  and  to  justify  monomania. 
Admitting,  as  we  all  admit,  the  importance  of 
keeping  alive  the  leading  names  in  history,  what 
is  the  use  of  this  long  procession  of  the  hopelessly 
insignificant?  Why  repeat  the  familiar  formula 
about  the  man  who  was  born  on  such  a  day,  was 
"educated  at  the  grammar  school  of  his  native 
town, ' '  graduated  in  such  a  year,  became  fellow 
of  his  college,  took  a  living,  married,  published 
a  volume  of  sermons  which  nobody  has  read  for  a 
century  or  two,  and  has  been  during  all  that  time 
in  his  churchyard?  Can  he  not  be  left  in  peace, 
side  by  side  with  the  "  rude  forefathers  of  the 
hamlet,"  who  are  content  to  lie  beneath  their 


National  Biography  3 

quiet  mounds  of  grass  ?  Is  it  not  almost  a  mockery 
to  persist  in  keeping  up  some  faint  and  flickering 
image  of  him  above-ground?  There  is  often 
some  good  reading  to  be  found  in  country  church- 
yards; but,  on  the  whole,  if  one  had  to  choose, 
one  would  perhaps  rather  have  the  good  old 
timber  cross-piece,  with  "afflictions  sore  long  time 
he  bore, "  than  the  ambitious  monuments  where 
History  and  its  attendant  cherubs  are  eternally 
poring  over  the  list  of  the  squire's  virtues  and 
honours.  Why  struggle  against  the  inevitable? 
Better  oblivion  than  a  permanent  admission  that 
you  were  thoroughly  and  hopelessly  commonplace. 
I  confess  that  I  sometimes  thought  as  much  when 
I  was  toiling  on  my  old  treadmill,  now  Mr.  Lee's. 
Much  of  the  work  to  be  done  was  uninteresting, 
if  not  absolutely  repulsive.  I  was  often  inclined 
to  sympathise  with  the  worthy  Simon  Browne,  a 
Non-Conformist  divine  of  the  last  century.  Poor 
Browne  had  received  a  terrible  shock.  Some 
accounts  say  that  he  had  lost  his  wife  and  only 
son;  others  that  he  had  " accidentally  strangled  a 
highwayman," — not,  one  would  think,  so  painful 
a  catastrophe.  Anyhow,  his  mind  became  affected ; 
he  fancied  that  his  "spiritual  substance"  had 
been  annihilated;  he  was  a  mere  empty  shell,  a 
body  without  a  soul;  and,  under  these  circum- 
stances, as  he  tells  us,  he  took  to  an  employment 


4  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

which  did  not  require  a  soul — he  became  a  dic- 
tionary-maker. Still,  we  should,  as  he  piously 
adds,  "  thank  God  for  everything,  and  therefore  for 
dictionary-makers. "  Though  Browne's  dictionary 
was  not  of  the  biographical  kind,  the  remark 
seemed  to  be  painfully  applicable.  Browne  was 
only  giving  in  other  words  the  pith  of  Carlyle's 
constant  lamentations  when  struggling  amidst  the 
vast  dust-heaps  accumulated  by  Dryasdust  and  his 
fellows.  Could  any  good  come  of  these  painful 
toilings  among  the  historical  "  kitchen  middens"? 
If  here  and  there  you  disinter  some  precious  coin, 
does  the  rare  success  repay  the  endless  sifting  of 
the  gigantic  mounds  of  shot  rubbish?  And  yet, 
by  degrees,  I  came  to  think  that  there  was  really 
a  justification  for  toils  not  of  the  most  attractive 
kind.  When  our  first  volume  appeared,  one  of 
our  critics  complained  of  me  for  not  starting  with 
a  preface.  A  preface  saves  much  trouble  to  a 
reviewer — sometimes  the  whole  trouble  of  reading 
the  book.  I  do  not,  however,  much  regret  the 
omission,  for  the  real  utility  of  our  undertaking, 
as  it  now  presents  itself  to  my  mind,  had  not  then 
become  fully  evident.  I  am  not  about  to  write  a 
preface  now,  but  I  wish  to  give  a  hint  or  two  of 
what  I  might  or  ought  to  have  said  in  such  a  per- 
formance had  I  clearly  perceived  what  has  been 
gradually  forced  upon  me  by  experience. 


National  Biography  5 

The  "  commemorative  instinct"  to  which  Mr. 
Lee  refers  has,  undoubtedly,  much  to  do  with  the 
undertaking;  but,  like  other  instincts,  it  requires 
to  be  regulated  by  more  explicit  reason.  The 
thoroughbred  Dryasdust  is  a  very  harmless,  and 
sometimes  a  very  amiable,  creature.  He  may 
urge  that  his  hobby  is  at  least  a  very  innocent  one, 
and  that  we  have  no  more  call  to  condemn  a  man 
who  has  a  passion  for  vast  accumulations  of  dates, 
names,  and  facts  than  to  condemn  another  for  a 
love  of  art  or  natural  history.  The  specialist  who 
is  typified  in  O.  W.  Holmes 's  Scarabee,  the  man 
who  devotes  a  lifetime  to  acquiring  abnormal 
familiarity  with  the  minutest  peculiarities  of  some 
obscure  tribe  of  insects,  does  no  direct  harm  to 
his  fellows,  and  incidentally  contributes  some- 
thing, however  minute  the  contribution  may  be 
to  scientific  progress.  We  must  respect  the  zeal 
which  enables  a  man  to  expend  the  superabundant 
energy,  which  might  have  led  to  fame  or  fortune, 
upon  achievements  of  which,  perhaps,  not  half 
a  dozen  living  men  will  appreciate  either  the 
general  value  or  the  cost  to  the  worker.  Dryas- 
dust deserves  the  same  sort  of  sympathy.  He  has, 
no  doubt,  his  weaknesses.  His  passion  becomes  a 
monomania.  He  spends  infinite  toil  upon  work 
which  has  no  obvious  interest,  and  he  often  conies 
to  attach  an  absurd  importance  to  his  results. 


6  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Such  studies  as  genealogy  or  bibliography  have 
but  a  remote  bearing  upon  any  of  the  vital 
problems  suggested  by  the  real  historian.  We 
shudder  when  we  read  that  the  excellent  Colonel 
Chester  spent  years  upon  investigating  the  genea- 
logy of  Washington,  and  accumulated,  among 
many  other  labours,  eighty-seven  folio  volumes, 
each  of  more  than  400  pages  of  extracts  from 
parish  registers.  He  died,  it  is  added,  of  "  inces- 
sant work. "  The  late  Mr.  Bradshaw,  again,  a  man 
of  most  admirable  character,  and  very  fine  intel- 
lectual qualities,  acquired,  by  unremitting  practice 
an  astonishing  power  of  identifying  at  a  glance  the 
time  and  place  of  printing  of  old  books.  He 
could  interpret  minute  typographical  indications 
as  the  Red  Indian  can  read  on  a  dead  leaf  or  blade 
of  grass  the  sign  of  the  traveller  who  made  it. 
Certainly  one  is  tempted  to  regret  at  first  sight 
that  such  abilities  were  not  applied  in  more 
obviously  useful  fields.  What  do  we  care  whether 
one  or  another  obscure  country  squire  in  the 
sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century  had  the  merit  of 
being  progenitor  of  Washington?  Can  it  really 
matter  whether  a  particular  volume  was  printed  at 
Rotterdam  or  at  Venice — in  the  year  1600  or  ten 
years  sooner  or  later?  I  will  not  discuss  the 
moral  question.  At  any  rate,  one  may  perhaps 
urge,  it  is  better  than  spending  brain-power  upon 


National  Biography  7 

chess  problems,  which  is  yet  an  innocent  form  of 
amusement.  Such  a  labourer  may  incidentally 
provide  data  of  real  importance  to  the  political  or 
literary  historian:  he  reduces,  once  for  all,  one 
bit  of  chaos  to  order,  and  helps  to  raise  the  general 
standard  of  accurate  research.  He  is  pretty 
certain  to  confer  a  benefit,  if  not  a  very  important 
benefit,  upon  mankind;  whereas,  if  he  fancied 
himself  a  philosopher,  he  might  be  wasting  his 
labour  as  hopelessly  as  in  squaring  the  circle.  He 
is  at  least  laying  bricks,  not  blowing  futile  soap- 
bubbles. 

The  labours  of  innumerable  inquirers  upon 
obscure  topics  have,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  ac- 
cumulated vast  stores  of  knowledge.  A  danger 
has  shown  itself  that  the  historian  may  be  over- 
whelmed by  the  bulk  of  his  materials.  A  century 
or  two  ago  we  were  content  with  histories  after 
the  fashion  of  Hume.  In  a  couple  of  years  he  was 
apparently  not  only  to  write,  but  to  accumulate 
the  necessary  knowledge  for  writing,  a  history 
stretching  from  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar  to  the 
time  of  Henry  VII.  A  historian  who  now  does  his 
work  conscientiously  has  to  take  about  the  same 
time  to  narrate  events  as  the  events  themselves 
occupied  in  happening.  Innumerable  sources  of 
knowledge  have  been  opened,  and  he  will  be 
regarded  as  superficial  if  he  does  not  more  or 


8  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

less  avail  himself  of  every  conceivable  means  of 
information.  He  cannot  be  content  simply  with 
the  old  chroniclers  or  with  the  later  writers  who 
summarised  them.  Ancient  charters,  official  re- 
cords of  legal  proceedings,  manor  rolls,  and  the 
archives  of  towns  have  thrown  light  upon  the 
underlying  conditions  of  history.  Local  historians 
have  unearthed  curious  facts,  whose  significance 
is  only  beginning  to  be  perceived.  Calendars  of 
State  papers  enable  us  to  trace  the  opinions  of  the 
great  men  who  were  most  intimately  concerned 
in  the  making  of  history.  The  despatches  of 
ambassadors  occupied  in  keenly  watching  con- 
temporary events  have  been  partly  printed,  and 
still  lie  in  vast  masses  at  Simancas  and  Venice  and 
the  Vatican.  The  Historical  Manuscripts  Com- 
mission has  made  known  to  us  something  of  the 
vast  stores  of  old  letters  and  papers  which  had 
been  accumulating  dust  in  the  libraries  of  old 
country  mansions.  When  we  go  to  the  library 
of  the  British  Museum,  and  look  at  the  gigantic 
catalogue  of  printed  books,  and  remember  the 
huge  mass  of  materials  which  can  be  inspected  in 
the  manuscript  department,  we — I  can  speak  for 
myself  at  least — have  a  kind  of  nightmare  sensa- 
tion. A  merciful  veil  of  oblivion  has  no  doubt 
covered  a  great  deal.  Yet  we  may  feel  inclined 
to  imagine  that  no  fact  which  has  happened  within 


National  Biography  9 

the  last  few  centuries  has  been  so  thoroughly 
hidden  that  we  can  be  quite  sure  that  it  is  irre- 
coverable. Over  two  centuries  ago  a  lad  unknown 
to  fame  wrote  a  thesis  in  a  Dutch  University.  I 
stumbled  upon  it  one  day  and  discovered  a  bio- 
graphical date  of  the  smallest  conceivable  interest 
to  anybody.  But  it  gives  one  a  queer  shock 
when  one  realises  that  even  so  trumpery  and 
antiquated  a  document  has  not  been  allowed  to 
find  its  way  to  oblivion.  Happily  some  Uni- 
versity theses  have  been  lost,  but  as  the  process  of 
commemorating  proceeds  with  accelerated  rapidity 
it  almost  seems  as  though  we  had  made  up  our 
minds  that  nothing  was  ever  to  be  forgotten. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  this  huge  accumula- 
tion of  materials  has  been  an  unmixed  benefit  to 
history.  Undoubtedly  we  know  many  things 
much  more  thoroughly  than  our  ancestors.  Still, 
in  reading,  for  example,  the  later  volumes  of 
Macaulay  or  Froude,  we  feel  sometimes  that  it  is 
possible  to  have  too  much  State-paper.  The  main 
outlines,  which  used  to  be  the  whole  of  history, 
are  still  the  most  important,  and  instead  of  being 
filled  up  and  rendered  more  precise  and  vivid, 
they  sometimes  seem  to  disappear  behind  an 
elaborate  account  of  what  statesmen  and  diplo- 
matists happened  to  think  about  them  at  the  time 
— and,  sometimes,  what  such  persons  thought 


io  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

implied  a  complete  misconception  of  the  real 
issues.  But  in  any  case  one  conclusion  is  very 
obvious,  namely,  that  with  the  accumulation  of 
material  there  should  be  a  steady  elaboration  of 
the  contrivances  for  making  it  accessible.  The 
growth  of  a  great  library  converts  the  library  into 
a  hopeless  labyrinth,  unless  it  is  properly  cata- 
logued as  it  grows.  To  turn  it  to  full  account, 
you  require  not  only  a  catalogue,  but  some  kind  of 
intelligent  guide  to  the  stores  which  it  contains. 
You  are  like  a  man  wandering  in  a  vast  wilder- 
ness, which  is  springing  up  in  every  direction 
with  tropical  luxuriance;  and  you  feel  the 
necessity  of  having  paths  carried  through  it  upon 
some  intelligible  system  which  will  enable  you  to 
find  your  way  to  the  required  place  and  tell  you 
in  what  directions  further  research  would  probably 
be  thrown  away. 

Now  it  is  to  this  want,  or  to  provide  the  means 
of  satisfying  one  part  of  this  want,  that  the 
dictionary  is  intended  in  the  first  place  to  corre- 
spond. It  ought  to  be — it  is  not  for  me  to  say 
how  far  it  has  succeeded  in  becoming — an  in- 
dispensable guide  to  persons  who  would  other- 
wise feel  that  they  were  hewing  their  way  through 
a  hopelessly  intricate  jungle.  Every  student 
ought,  I  will  not  say  to  have  it  in  his  library,  but 
to  carry  it  about  with  him  (metaphorically  speak- 


National  Biography  n 

ing)  in  his  pocket.  It  is  true  that,  in  a  physical 
sense,  it  is  rather  large  for  that  purpose,  though 
fifty  or  sixty  volumes  represent  but  a  small 
fragment  of  a  decent  library;  but  the  judicious 
person  can  always  manage  to  have  it  at  hand. 
And  then,  though  in  its  first  intention  it  should 
be  useful  as  an  auxiliary  in  various  researches,  I 
shall  venture  to  assert  that  it  may  also  be  not  only 
useful  for  the  more  exalted  purpose  of  satisfying 
the  commemorative  instinct,  but — I  do  not  fear 
to  say  so,  though  my  friends  sometimes  laugh  at 
my  saying — it  may  turn  out  to  be  one  of  the  most 
amusing  works  in  the  language. 

I  will  start,  however,  by  saying  something  of 
the  assertion  which  is  more  likely  to  meet  with 
acceptance.  The  utility  of  having  this  causeway 
carried  through  the  vast  morass  of  antiquarian 
accumulation  is  obvious  in  a  general  way.  The 
remark,  however,  upon  which  Mr.  Lee  has  in- 
sisted, indicates  a  truth  not  quite  so  clearly  recog- 
nised as  might  be  desirable.  The  provinces  of 
the  historian  and  the  biographer  are  curiously 
distinct,  although  they  are  closely  related.  History 
is  of  course  related  to  biography  inasmuch  as  most 
events  are  connected  with  some  particular  person. 
Even  the  most  philosophical  of  historians  cannot 
describe  the  Norman  Conquest  without  reference 
to  William  and  to  Harold.  And,  on  the  other 


i2  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

side,  every  individual  life  is  to  some  extent  an 
indication  of  the  historical  conditions  of  his  time. 
The  most  retired  recluse  is  the  product  at  least 
of  his  parents  and  his  schooling,  and  is  affected 
by  contemporary  thought.  And  yet,  the  curious 
thing  is  the  degree  in  which  this  fact  can  be 
ignored  on  both  sides.  If  we  look  at  any  of  the 
ordinary  collections  of  biographical  material,  we 
shall  constantly  be  struck  by  the  writer's  uncon- 
sciousness of  the  most  obvious  inferences.  He 
will  mention  a  fact  which  in  the  hands  of  the  his- 
torian might  clear  up  a  political  problem,  or  which 
may  be  strikingly  characteristic  of  the  social  con- 
ditions of  the  time,  without,  as  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  would  say,  noting  the  "  necessary  impli- 
cation. "  A  contemporary  of  course  takes  things 
for  granted  which  we  see  to  be  exceptional;  or 
he  may  supply,  without  knowing  it,  evidence  that 
will  be  useful  in  settling  a  controversy  which  has 
not  yet  come  to  light.  In  the  ordinary  books  such 
facts,  again,  have  often  been  repeated  mechan- 
ically, and  readers  are  not  rarely  half  asleep  when 
they  look  at  their  manual.  Thus  I  have  sometimes 
noticed  that  a  man  may  be  in  one  sense  a  most 
accomplished  biographer ;  that  is,  that  he  can  tell 
you  off-hand  a  vast  number  of  facts,  genealogical, 
official,  and  so  forth,  and  yet  has  never,  as  we  say, 
put  two  and  two  together.  I  have  read  lives 


National  Biography  13 

giving  minute  details  about  the  careers  of  authors, 
which  yet  prove  unmistakably  that  the  writers  had 
no  general  knowledge  of  the  literature  of  the  period. 
A  man  will  know  every  fact  about  all  the  people 
mentioned,  say,  in  Boswell,  and  yet  have  no  con- 
ception of  the  general  position  of  Johnson,  or 
Burke,  or  Goldsmith  in  English  literature.  He 
seems  to  have  walked  through  a  great  gallery 
blindfold,  or  rather  with  some  strange  affection  of 
the  eyes  which  enabled  him  to  make  a  catalogue 
without  receiving  any  general  impression  of  the 
pictures.  The  great  Mr.  Shylock  Holmes  has 
insisted  upon  the  value  of  the  most  insignificant 
facts ;  and  if  Mr.  Holmes  had  turned  his  mind  to 
history  instead  of  modern  criminal  cases,  he  would 
have  found  innumerable  little  incidents  which  only 
require  to  be  skilfully  dovetailed  together  to 
throw  a  new  light  upon  many  important  questions. 
More  can  be  done  by  the  man  of  true  historical 
imagination — the  man  who  appreciates  the  great 
step  made  by  Scott  when  he  observed  that  our 
ancestors  were  once  as  really  alive  as  we  are  now — 
and  who  finds  in  those  countless  neglected  and 
apparently  barren  facts,  vivid  illustrations  of  the 
conditions  of  life  and  thought  of  our  predecessors. 
We  all  know  how  Macaulay,  with  his  love  of  castle- 
building,  found  in  obscure  newspapers  and  the 
fugitive  literature  of  the  period  the  materials  for 


14  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

a  picture  which,  with  whatever  shortcomings,  was 
at  least  incomparably  brilliant  and  lifelike.  Now, 
the  first  office  of  the  biographer  is  to  facilitate  what 
I  may  call  the  proper  reaction  between  biography 
and  history ;  to  make  each  study  throw  all  possible 
light  on  the  other ;  and  so  to  give  fresh  vitality  to 
two  different  lines  of  study,  which,  though  their 
mutual  dependence  is  obvious,  can  yet  be  divorced 
so  effectually  by  the  mere  Dryasdust.  And  this 
remark  supplies  a  sufficient  answer  to  one  question 
which  has  often  been  put  to  me.  What  entitles  a 
man  to  a  place  in  the  dictionary?  Why  should  it 
include  30,000  instead  of  3000  or  300,000  names? 
Mr.  Lee  has  given  an  answer  which  is,  I  think,  cor- 
rect in  its  proper  place;  but,  before  referring  to  it, 
I  must  point  out  that  there  is  another,  and  what 
would  be  called  a  more  "  objective  "  criterion  which 
necessarily  governs  the  solution  in  the  first  instance. 
In  order,  that  is,  to  secure  the  proper  correlation 
between  the  biographer  and  the  historian,  it  is 
plainly  necessary  to  include  every  one  who  is 
sufficiently  noticed  in  the  ordinary  histories  to 
make  some  further  inquiry  probable.  To  give  the 
first  instance  that  occurs,  Macaulay  tells  a  very 
curious  story  about  a  certain  intrigue  which  led 
to  the  final  abolition  of  licensing  the  Press  in 
England.  The  fact  itself  is  one  of  great  interest 
in  the  history  of  English  literature,  The  two 


National  Biography  15 

people   chiefly  concerned  were  utterly  obscure: 
Charles  Blount  and  Edmund  Bohun  necessarily 
vanish  from  Macaulay's  pages  as  soon  as  they  have 
played  their  little  drama.     But  it  is  natural  to 
inquire  what  these  two  men  otherwise  were,  who 
were  incidentally  involved  in  a  really  critical  turn- 
ing-point.    A  reference  to  the  dictionary  will  not 
only  answer  the  question,  but  help  to  make  more 
distinct  the  conditions  under  which  English  writers 
won  a  most  important  privilege.    The  historian 
can  only  deal  with  a  particular  stage  at  which  an 
obscure  person  emerges  into  public,  but  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  event  may  start  out  more  vividly 
when  we  can  trace  his  movements  below  the 
surface.     Now  to  help  in  this  search  the  bio- 
grapher has  before   him  an  immense   mass  of 
material    already    partially    organised.     Nobody 
who  has  dipped  into  the  subject  is  ignorant  of  the 
immense  service  rendered  by  Anthony  a  Wood 
in  the  famous  Athena  Oxonienses.     It  gives  brief, 
but  very  shrewd,  accounts  of  all  men  connected 
with  Oxford,  and  records  the  results  of  a  laborious 
personal  inquiry  during  his  own  period,  which,  but 
for  him,  would  have  been  forgotten.   For  the  same 
period  we  have   all  the  collections  due  to  the 
zeal  of  various  religious  sects;    the  lives  of  the 
Non-Conformists  ejected  in  1662;  the  opposition 
work  upon  the  "  sufferings  of  the  clergy  "  under  the 


1 6  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Commonwealth ;  the  lives  of  the  Jesuits  who  were 
martyred  by  the  penal  laws ;  and  the  lives  of  the 
Quakers,  who  have  always  been  conspicuous  for 
preserving  records  of  their  brethren.  Besides 
these,  there  are,  of  course,  many  old  biographical 
collections,  including  the  dictionaries  devoted  to 
some  special  class — the  artists,  the  physicians,  the 
judges,  the  admirals,  and  so  forth.  The  first  simple 
rule,  therefore,  is  that  every  name  which  appears 
in  these  collections  has  at  least  a  presumptive 
right  to  admission.  An  ideal  dictionary  would  be 
a  complete  codification  or  summary  of  all  the 
previously  existing  collections.  It  must  aim  at 
such  an  approximation  to  that  result  as  human 
frailty  will  permit;  in  other  words,  it  is  bound 
first  to  include  all  the  names  which  have  appeared 
in  any  respectable  collection  of  lives,  and,  in 
the  next  place,  to  supplement  this  by  including 
a  great  many  names  which,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  have  dropped  out,  but  which  appear  to  be 
approximately  of  the  same  rank.  The  rule,  it  is 
obvious,  must  be  in  part  the  venerable  "rule  of 
thumb, "but  it  gives  a  kind  of  test  which  is  a 
sufficient  guide  in  discreet  hands. 

The  advantage  of  this  does  not,  I  hope,  require 
much  exposition.  I  will  only  make  one  remark. 
Every  student  knows  the  vast  difference  which  is 
made  when  you  have  some  right  to  assume  the 


National  Biography  17 

completeness  of  any  research.  I  may  look  into 
books,  and  search  libraries  on  the  chance  of  finding 
information  indefinitely.  But  if  I  have  a  book  or 
a  library  of  which  I  can  say  with  some  confidence 
that,  if  it  is  not  there,  the  presumption  is  that  it 
does  not  exist,  my  labour  has  a  definite,  even 
though  it  be  a  negative,  result.  That,  for  example, 
is  the  sufficient  justification  of  the  collection  of 
every  kind  of  printed  matter  in  the  British 
Museum.  It  is  not  only  that  nobody  can  say 
before  hand  what  bit  of  knowledge  may  not  turn 
out  to  be  useful,  but  that  one  has  the  immense 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  a  fact  not  recorded 
somewhere  or  other  on  those  crowded  shelves 
must  be,  in  all  probability,  a  fact  for  which  it  is 
idle  to  search  further.  No  biographical  dictionary 
can  be  in  the  full  sense  exhaustive ;  an  exhaustive 
dictionary  would  involve  a  reprint  of  all  the  parish 
registers,  to  mention  nothing  else ;  but  it  may  be 
approximately  exhaustive  for  the  purposes  of  all 
serious  students  of  any  of  the  various  departments 
of  history.  In  a  great  number  of  cases,  moreover, 
this  can  be  achieved  with  a  tolerable  approximation 
to  completeness.  We  take,  for  example,  any  of 
the  more  important  names  around  which  has  been 
raised  a  lasting  dust  of  controversy.  A  dictionary 
ought  in  the  first  place,  to  supply  you  with  a 
sufficient  indication  of  all  that  has  been  written 


Vol.    1-2. 


1 8  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

upon  the  subject ;  it  should  state  briefly  the  result 
of  the  last  researches;  explain  what  appears  to 
be  the  present  opinion  among  the  most  qualified 
experts,  and  what  are  the  points  which  seem  still  to 
be  open ;  and,  above  all,  should  give  a  full  reference 
to  all  the  best  and  most  original  sources  of  infor- 
mation. The  most  important  and  valuable  part  of 
a  good  dictionary  is  often  that  dry  list  of  author- 
ities which  frequently  costs  an  amount  of  skilled 
labour  not  apparent  on  the  surface,  and  not 
always,  it  is  to  be  feared,  recognised  with  due 
gratitude.  The  accumulation  of  material  makes 
this  a  most  essential  part  of  the  work ;  for  we  are 
daily  more  in  want  of  a  guide  through  the  wilder- 
ness, and  a  judicious  indication  of  the  right 
method  of  inquiry  gives  often  what  it  may  be 
hard  to  find  elsewhere,  and  is  always  a  useful  check 
upon  our  unassisted  efforts.  When  you  plunge 
into  the  antiquarian  bog  you  are  glad  to  have 
sign-posts,  showing  where  previous  adventurers 
have  been  engulfed;  where  some  sort  of  feasible 
track  has  been  constructed,  and  who  are  the  trust- 
worthy guides.  Moreover,  for  a  vast  variety  of 
purposes,  the  dictionary,  though  only  second- 
hand authority,  may  be  quite  sufficient  for  all 
that  is  required.  In  following  any  of  the  countless 
tracks  that  may  lead  through  history,  you  meet 
at  every  step  with  persons  and  events  intruding 


National  Biography  19 

from  different  regions.  The  man  of  letters  may 
be  effected  by  a  political  intrigue ;  a  soldier  may 
come  into  contact  with  men  whose  chief  activity 
belongs  to  literature  or  science.  The  most 
thoroughgoing  inquirer  has  to  take  a  vast  number 
of  collateral  facts  upon  trust ;  and  it  may  save  him 
infinite  trouble  to  get  the  results  of  special  know- 
ledge upon  what  are  to  him  collateral  points. 

This,  to  which  I  might  add  indefinitely,  corre- 
sponds to  what  I  may  call  the  utilitarian  aspect 
of  a  dictionary:  the  immediate  purpose  to  which 
it  may  be  turned  to  account  by  students  in  any 
historical  inquiry.  It  should  be  a  confidential 
friend  constantly  at  their  elbow,  giving  them  a 
summary  of  the  knowledge  of  antiquaries,  genea- 
logists, bibliographers,  as  well  as  historians,  upon 
every  collateral  point  which  may  happen  for 
the  moment  to  be  relevant.  But,  so  far,  however 
well  done,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  is  bound  to 
be  rather  dry.  To  be  reduced  to  a  specimen  put 
in  a  museum  is  not  a  very  cheering  prospect,  and 
offers  little  satisfaction  for  the  commemorative 
instinct.  Now  I  have  to  add  that  within  certain 
limits  the  dictionary  may  be  of  importance  in  that 
direction  too.  I  do  not  expect  that  a  future 
Nelson  will  exclaim,  "  Victory,  or  an  article  in 
The  Biographical  Dictionary!"  I  have  never 
found  my  own  appetite  for  labour  stimulated  by 


20  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  flattering  hope  that  I  might  some  day  be  the 
subject  instead  of  the  author  of  an  article.  If  I 
thought  that  my  posthumous  wishes  would  be 
respected,  I  should  beg  to  be  omitted  from  the 
supplement.  But,  for  all  that,  the  dictionary 
article  may  do  much  to  keep  alive  the  memory 
of  people  whom  it  is  good  to  remember.  Nobody 
will  expect  the  poor  dictionary-maker  to  be  a 
substitute  for  Boswell  or  Lockhart.  The  judicious 
critic  is  well  aware  that  it  is  not  upon  the  lives 
of  the  great  men  that  the  value  of  the  book 
really  depends.  It  is  the  second-rate  people — the 
people  whose  lives  have  to  be  reconstructed  from 
obituary  notices,  or  from  references  in  memoirs 
and  collections  of  letters;  or  sought  in  prefaces 
to  posthumous  works;  or  sometimes  painfully 
dug  out  of  collections  of  manuscripts,  and  who 
really  become  generally  accessible  through  the 
dictionary  alone — that  provide  the  really  useful 
reading.  There  are  numbers  of  such  people 
whom  one  first  discovers  to  be  really  interesting 
when  the  scattered  materials  are  for  the  first  time 
pieced  together.  Nobody  need  look  at  Addison 
or  Byron  or  Milton  in  a  dictionary.  He  can  find 
fuller  and  better  notices  in  every  library;  and 
the  biographer  must  be  satisfied  if  he  has  put 
together  a  useful  compendium  of  all  the  relevant 
literature.  The  conditions  of  his  work  are  suf- 


National  Biography  21 

ficiently  obvious,  and  of  course  exclude  anything 
like  rhetoric  or  disquisition  in  criticism.  He  may 
indicate  but  cannot  expatiate.  He  has  before  him 
an  ideal  which  he  very  well  knows  is  never  quite 
realised.  Condensation  is  not  only  the  cardinal 
virtue  of  his  style,  but  the  virtue  to  which  all 
others  must  be  sacrificed.  He  must  be  content 
sometimes  to  toil  for  hours  with  the  single  result 
of  having  to  hold  his  tongue.  I  used  rigidly  to 
excise  the  sentence,  "Nothing  is  known  of  his 
birth  or  parentage,"  which  tended  to  appear  in  half 
the  lives,  because  where  nothing  is  known  it  seems 
simpler  that  nothing  should  be  said;  and  yet  a 
man  might  have  to  consult  a  whole  series  of  books 
before  discovering  even  that  negative  fact.  The 
poor  biographer,  again,  has  to  compress  his  work 
even  at  the  cost  of  much  clumsiness  of  style.  I 
am  painfully  aware  of  the  hideous  sentences  which 
I  have  constructed  in  trying  to  say  in  ten  words 
what,  as  I  fancied,  might  make  quite  a  pretty 
passage  if  spread  over  a  hundred.  I  have  groaned 
over  some  charming  anecdote  which  seemed  to  beg 
for  a  few  little  dramatic  accessories,  and  wedged 
it  remorselessly  into  its  allotted  corner,  grievously 
perplexed  by  the  special  difficulty  in  our  language 
of  making  the  "he's"  and  "she's"  refer  to  the 
proper  people  without  the  help  of  the  detestable 
"  latter"  and  "former."  Perhaps — so  one  thinks 


22  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

when  looking  at  some  modern  biographies — the 
training  in  condensation  is  not  altogether  bad.  But 
the  problem  is  to  condense  without  squeezing  out 
the  real  interest.  The  dictionary- writer  cannot  di- 
late ;  but  he  is  bound  so  far  as  he  can  to  make  the 
facts  tell  their  own  story.  He  is  not  to  pronounce  a 
panegyric  upon  heroism,  but  he  ought  so  to 
arrange  his  narrative  that  the  reader  may  be 
irresistibly  led  to  say  bravo!  It  is  possible  to 
make  a  story  more  pathetic  by  judicious  reticence, 
though  the  writer  who  depends  upon  such  a 
method  needs  especially  appreciative  readers.  He 
must  tell  a  good  story  so  as  to  bring  out  the 
humorous  side  without  indulging  in  open  hilarity, 
though  he  knows  painfully  that  many  readers  will 
not  take  a  joke  unless  it  is  labelled  "  funny,"  and 
some  will  not  take  it  until  it  has  been  hammered 
into  their  heads  by  repeated  strokes.  It  follows 
that  the  ideal  article  should  not  be  condensed  in 
the  sense  of  being  reduced  to  the  bare  dates  and 
facts  capable  of  being  arranged  in  mechanical 
order.  The  aim  should  be  to  give  whatever 
would  be  really  interesting  to  the  most  cultivated 
reader,  though  leaving  it  to  the  reader  to  put  the 
dots  over  the  i's.  The  writer  must  often  make 
the  sacrifice  of  keeping  his  most  important  reflec- 
tions to  himself;  but  it  is  not  the  less  important 
that  they  should  be  in  his  mind.  Imagine  a  mere 


National  Biography  23 

antiquary  and  a  competent  student  to  tell  within 
the  same  limits  the  life  of  some  eminent 
philosopher  or  divine.  The  difference  may  be 
enormous  between  the  writer  who  sees  what  are 
the  really  cardinal  facts  and  the  writer  to  whom 
any  and  every  fact  is  of  the  same  importance; 
and  yet  both  narratives  may  appear  at  first  sight 
to  be  equally  dry  and  barren.  I  remember  how 
a  life  was  ridiculed  by  a  literary  critic  because  it 
explained  a  certain  vote  at  the  Salters'  Hall  Con- 
ference. The  critic,  who  probably  knew  all  about 
Denis  and  Curll  and  the  pettiest  squabbles  of 
authors,  had  never  heard  of  Salters'  Hall,  and 
asked  who  cared  for  such  trifles,  or  what  it  could 
possibly  matter  how  anybody  had  voted  on  the 
occasion?  Yet  the  conference  marks  a  very  im- 
portant point  in  the  religious  history  of  the  day, 
and  to  know  how  a  man  voted  may  be  to  define  his 
position  in  a  very  serious  controversy.  The  writer, 
that  is,  must  give  the  significant  facts,  but  has 
often  to  leave  the  discovery  of  their  significance  to 
the  reader.  But  in  order  that  he  should  appreci- 
ate their  significance,  he  must  have  far  wider 
knowledge  than  he  can  expound.  The  dry  anti- 
quary will  often  omit  the  vital  and  insert  the 
merely  accidental ;  he  will  fail  to  arrange  them  in 
the  order  or  connection  which  makes  them  ex- 
plain their  meaning.  He  will  resemble  the  witness 


24  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

who  should  fail  to  mention  a  bit  of  evidence  which 
may  be  incidentally  conclusive  of  a  case  because  he 
is  not  able  to  appreciate  its  bearing.  And,  there- 
fore, though  the  two  lives  might  be  in  appearance 
equally  dry,  one  may  teem  with  useful  indications 
to  the  intelligent,  while  the  other  may  be  as  barren 
as  it  looks.  The  life  of  the  divine,  for  example, 
should  be  given  by  one  who  has  studied  the 
theology  or  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  day,  and 
who  therefore  knows  the  significance  conferred 
upon  a  particular  action  or  expression  of  opinion  by 
time  and  place.  He  must  abstain  from  exposition 
beyond  narrow  limits,  and,  of  course,  from  con- 
troversy. He  must  not  expatiate  upon  the  bad 
influence  of  the  heresy;  or  attempt  to  show  that 
it  was  a  heresy.  He  must  content  himself  with 
a  pithy  indication  of  its  historical  position  on 
the  development  of  the  time;  give  a  sufficient 
summary  to  show  how  the  doctrine  is  to  be  classed 
in  its  relation  to  the  main  currents  of  thought; 
and  indicate  the  way  in  which  it  has  since  been 
judged  by  competent  writers,  and  what  is  the  view 
now  taken  by  experts.  All  this,  which  might,  of 
course,  be  illustrated  in  other  departments  of 
biography,  shows  that  the  writer  ought  to  be  full 
of  knowledge,  which  he  must  yet  hold  in  reserve, 
or  of  which  he  must  content  himself  with  using  to 
suggest  serviceable  hints.  He  will  show  incident- 


National  Biography  25 

ally  why,  and  in  what  relations,  certain  books  are 
worth  reading  or  certain  events  worth  further 
study;  and  often,  no  doubt,  will  feel  the  restraint 
decidedly  painful. 

Lives  well  written  under  these  conditions  may, 
I  hold,  really  satisfy  the  commemorative  instinct. 
For  the  great  names  we  shall  look  elsewhere ;  the 
minute  names,  the  mere  rank  and  file  of  the  great 
army,  are  constantly  of  great  use;  but  rather 
because  they  come  into  the  narratives  of  other  lives 
or  supply  data  for  broader  histories,  than  because 
of  the  intrinsic  interest  of  the  story  itself.  But 
there  is  also  an  immense  number  of  second-rate 
people  whose  lives  are  full  of  suggestion  to  any 
intelligent  reader.  The  life  in  such  cases  should 
have  the  same  kind  of  merit  as  an  epitaph,  though 
under  less  exacting  conditions.  The  epitaph 
should  give  in  the  smallest  possible  number  of 
words  the  very  essence  of  a  man's  character  and  of 
his  claims  upon  the  memory  of  posterity.  The 
life  which  may  spread  over  two  or  three  pages 
should  aim  at  producing  the  same  effect;  and 
very  frequently  may  give  adequate  expression  to 
everything  that  we  can  really  afford  to  remember 
of  the  less  prominent  actions.  I  will  venture  one 
illustration.  There  is  no  class  of  lives  which  has  a 
more  distinctive  character  than  the  lives  of  our 
naval  heroes,  from  the  Elizabethan  days  to  our 


26  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

own.  As  I  am  not  criticising  the  execution  of  the 
dictionary,  but  only  indicating  its  main  purpose,  I 
will  say  nothing  in  praise  of  the  particular  con- 
tributor who  has  imbedded  in  its  pages  something 
like  a  complete  naval  history  of  the  country.  But 
I  may  say  this:  to  the  mere  literary  reader,  the 
ideal  of  a  sailor  is  represented  by  such  books  as 
Southey's  Life  of  Nelson;  or  still  more  vividly 
perhaps  by  the  novels  of  Captain  Marryat  or 
Smollett,  or  by  Kingsley's  Westward  Ho !  or  pos- 
sibly Miss  Austen's  Persuasion.  We  are  all  sup- 
posed to  know  something  of  the  great  admirals, 
upon  whom  R.  L.  Stevenson  wrote  a  charming 
article.  But  any  one  who  is  attracted  by  the  type, 
would  do  well  to  turn  over  the  dictionary  and  look 
up  the  long  list  of  minor  heroes,  who  stood  for 
their  portraits  to  Marryat  and  his  fellows ;  the  men 
who  cut  out  ships  in  harbour,  and  fought  men- 
of-war  with  merchantmen;  and  lay  in  wait 
for  galleons  and  suppressed  mutinies,  and  had 
desperate  single  combats  with  French  or  American 
frigates;  the  Trunnions  and  Amyas  Leighs  and 
Peter  Simples  of  real  life,  who  certainly  are  to  the 
full  as  interesting  as  their  imaginary  representa- 
tives. Many  of  them  have  hitherto  only  ex- 
isted, as  it  were,  in  fragments ;  their  lives  have  to 
be  put  together  from  despatches  and  incidental 
references  in  memoirs  and  histories;  but  when 


National  Biography  27 

reconstructed,  these  lives  form  a  gallery  more 
interesting  than  that  at  Greenwich  Hospital. 
They  have  got  into  a  little  Walhalla ;  and  I  think 
that  no  one  will  doubt  who  makes  the  experiments 
either  as  to  their  deserving  their  places,  or  as  to  the 
fact  that  the  commemoration  gives  a  very  real 
satisfaction  to  our  desire  to  keep  the  memory  of 
our  worthies  in  tolerable  repair. l 
I  And,  finally,  this  may  help  to  justify  my  daring 
remark  that  the  dictionary  is  an  amusing  work. 
This,  of  course,  is  true  only  upon  certain  condi- 
tions. The  reader,  as  I  have  intimated,  must 
supply  something  for  himself;  he  has  to  take  up 
the  dry  specimens  in  this  great  herbarium,  and  to 
expand  them  partly  by  the  help  of  his  own  imagi- 
nation till  they  take  something  of  the  form  and 
colouring  of  life.  Perhaps,  too,  it  must  be  added, 
that  he  should  know  the  great  art  of  skipping, 
though  some  excellent  friends  of  mine  have  told 
me  that  they  read  through  every  volume  as  it 
appears.  Their  state  is  the  more  gracious.  Yet 
no  man  is  a  real  reading  enthusiast  until  he  is 
sensible  of  the  pleasure  of  turning  over  some 

»  I  am  glad  to  see  that,  in  this  observation,  I  coincide  with 
the  author  of  Admirals  All,  who  has  been  good  enough  to  say 
a  word  for  the  dictionary  in  this  respect.  I  am  happy  that 
the  poetic  has  confirmed  the  prosaic  judgment.  Only  I  must 
add  that  the  compliment  which  he  pays  to  the  editor  of  the 
dictionary  is  rather  due  to  Professor  Laughton,  the  author 
of  the  lives  in  question. 


28  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

miscellaneous  collection,  and  lying  like  a  trout  in 
a  stream  snapping  up,  with  the  added  charm  of 
unsuspectedness,  any  of  the  queer  little  morsels  of 
oddity  or  pathos  that  may  drift  past  him.  The 
old  Gentleman's  Magazine  is  charming  in  that  way, 
but  I  do  not  know  that  one  can  find  a  much 
better  hunting-ground  than  the  dictionary.  I 
take  down  a  volume — honestly  at  random — and 
simply  dip  into  it  to  *see  what  will  turn  up.  I 
range,  as  it  happens,  over  all  the  centuries  from 
Caradoc  (Caractacus,  the  Romans  called  him), 
who  fought  against  a  Roman  army  backed  by  an 
elephant  corps,  before  A.D.  50,  to  a  gentleman  of 
the  same  name,  who  became  Lord  Howden,  and 
died  in  1873;  from  Carausius,  who  was  a  bit 
of  a  pirate  and  something  of  an  emperor,  in  the 
third  century,  and  whose  biographer  pathetically 
observes  that  the  exact  dates  of  his  life  and  ad- 
ventures are  "not  absolutely  certain, "to  Carlyle, 
in  whose  case  the  full  blaze  of  modern  biography 
has  left  not  even  the  minutest  detail  untouched. 
There  is  Canute,  who  is  not  here  introduced  to 
the  tide — the  biographer  finds  out,  by  the  way, 
that  an  anecdote  is  simply  the  polite  name  of  a  lie 
— and  mediaeval  churchmen,  like  the  admirable 
Chad,  thanks  to  whom,  according  to  Scott,  the 
fanatic  Brooke  got  his  deserts  at  Lichfield,  and 
William  de  St.  Carilef ,  whose  character,  we  regret 


National  Biography  29 

to  say,  is  still  puzzling,  though  exactly  eight 
hundred  years  have  passed  since  he  became  a  fair 
subject  for  discussion.  Let  us  hope  that  it  will  be 
cleared  up  in  time.  We  have  that  Catesby  who 
to  most  of  us  is  known  by  that  famous  doggerel 
so  much  more  impressive  than  the  orthodox 
historical  phrases  about  "the  cat,  the  rat,  and 
Lovel  our  dog,"  and  the  other  Catesby  who  wished 
to  try  what  would  certainly  have  been  a  most 
interesting  philosophical  experiment  of  blowing 
King  and  Parliament  into  the  air  and  seeing  what 
the  country  would  think  of  it.  In  Tudor  times 
are  the  three  Catherines  who  had  the  satisfac- 
tion of  calling  Henry  VIII.  husband,  and  three 
Carolines  to  match  them  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
There  is  the  Elizabethan  statesman  Cecil,  the 
great  Lord  Burghley,  and  the  Robert  Carr  (Earl 
of  Somerset)  who  introduces  us  to  the  darkest 
tragedy  of  the  time  of  James  I.,  and  Lucius  Cary 
(Lord  Falkland),  who  still  goes  about  "  ingeminat- 
ing peace"  to  remind  us  of  the  great  civil  war; 
and  John  Carteret  (Earl  Granville),  who,  in  the 
jovial  Hanoverian  days,  was  at  the  head  of  the 
"drunken  administration. "  Though  some  of  these 
are  sufficiently  celebrated  figures  to  be  set  forth  in 
the  standard  histories,  they  have  all,  I  think,  a 
personal  interest  which  repays  a  visit  to  them  in 
their  homes.  At  the  opposite  end  of  the  scale  we 


30  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

have  the  names  which,  though  they  primarily 
represent  mere  oddities,  incidentally  light  up  odd 
social  phases.  Here  is  Margaret  Catchpole,  a  real 
heroine  of  romance,  who  stole  a  horse  and  rode 
seventy  miles  to  visit  her  lover,  and  after  being 
transported  for  an  offence  which  excited  the  com- 
passion of  her  judges,  became  one  of  the  "  matri- 
archs" to  whom  our  Australian  cousins  trace  their 
descent.  There  is  Bampfylde  Moore  Carew,  the 
volunteer  gypsy,  who  anticipated  Borrow  in  the 
previous  generation,  and  gives  us  a  passing  glimpse 
into  the  vagrant  life  in  old  English  lanes  and 
commons.  There  is  John  Case,  astrologer,  who, 
as  Addison  tells  us,  made  more  money  by  his 
poetry  than  Dry  den  had  done  in  a  lifetime.  It 
consisted  of  the  couplet, 

Within  this  place 
Lives  Doctor  Case, 

and  is  apparently  an  early  triumph  of  the  great 
art  of  advertising.  There  is  the  worthy  Cat,  who 
had  an  "educated  and  thoughtful  mind,"  whose 
story  illustrates  the  early  growth  of  clubs,  and 
whose  name  has  been  preserved  by  the  new  style 
of  portraits.  There  is  the  modern  hero,  Ben 
Caunt,  to  illustrate  the  halo  which  lingered  round 
the  last  days  of  prize-fighting.  I  venture  to  con- 
tribute a  fresh  anecdote  to  his  life.  I  once  made 


National  Biography  31 

a  pilgrimage  to  the  place  where  Milton  wrote  the 
Allegro  and  Penseroso.  The  name  of  the  poet 
seemed  to  have  vanished,  but  a  bust  of  the  great 
Ben  Caunt  showed  that  the  spirit  of  hero-worship 
was  not  extinct.  Its  possessor  told  us  the  story 
with  legitimate  pride.  A  son  of  the  hero  had 
brought  it  in  a  cart  to  an  admirer  after  the 
original's  death.  He  stopped  at  an  inn  to  refresh 
himself  "with  a  bottle  of  soda-water,"  with  the 
result  that  he  upset  the  cart  at  the  next  turning, 
and  the  bust  fell  upon  him  and  killed  him  on 
the  spot.  The  bust  happily  survived,  and  remains 
to  kindle  the  enthusiasm  of  the  villagers.  Should 
not  a  Caunt  be  remembered  as  well  as  a  Milton? 
He  represents  a  type  which  had  been  character- 
istic, at  least,  of  the  days  of  the  men  of  Trafalgar 
and  Waterloo.  A  more  respectable  memorial  of 
that  time  was  the  sturdy  Carew  (Hallowell  was  his 
name  at  the  time)  who  gave  to  Nelson  a  coffin 
made  from  the  mainmast  of  the  Orient,  to  remind 
the  great  man  (it  was  suggested)  that  he  was  still 
mortal.  The  reminder  was  hardly  needful,  one 
would  think,  just  after  the  battle  of  the  Nile. 
Perhaps  a  more  interesting  glimpse  of  the  same 
period  is  given  by  the  history  of  Richard  Carlile, 
the  freethinker,  who  suffered  over  nine  years' 
imprisonment  for  spreading  opinions  offensive  to 
most  of  his  neighbours,  but  of  whom  it  is  said — 


32  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and,  I  think,  justly — that  he  did  more  than  any 
man  of  his  time  to  promote  the  freedom  of  the 
Press.  His  career,  at  any  rate,  is  curiously  illus- 
trative of  the  final  struggle  in  that  cause.  If  you 
prefer  a  martyrdom  in  a  different  cause,  you  may 
look  at  the  life  of  Edmund  Castle,  who  made  "  an 
epoch  in  Semitic  scholarship. "  He  was  a  man  of 
property  who  chose  to  labour  eighteen  or  nine- 
teen hours  a  day  at  a  lexicon — a  dictionary-maker 
again!  He  lost  his  health,  suffered  (it  does  not 
quite  appear  how)  fractures  and  contusions  of  his 
limbs,  almost  lost  his  sight,  and  spent  all  his 
money.  He  published  his  immortal  work  by 
subscription,  and  had  to  wait  for  months  at  the 
place  of  sale  before  he  could  get  a  small  part  of 
his  edition  sold.  The  poor  man  got  a  little  pre- 
ferment at  last  towards  the  end  of  his  life;  but 
certainly  scholars  will  not  grudge  him  some 
sympathy.  I  will,  however,  go  no  further.  I  see 
many  more  suggestive  names.  The  Cartwrights, 
for  example,  include  an  important  inventor  of 
machinery,  a  famous  dentist,  a  great  Puritan 
divine,  a  Romanising  bishop,  the  Colonel  New- 
come  of  the  old  reformers,  and  a  once  brilliant 
dramatist.  I  do  not  think  that  my  dip  into  one 
volume  has  produced  a  result  differing  much  from 
the  average.  My  readers  must  judge  whether  it 
goes  to  justify  my  statement.  To  me  it  seems 


National  Biography  33 

that  at  every  haul  one  finds  some  specimens 
which,  though  they  require  the  reader  to  do  his 
part,  are  full  of  suggestions  to  the  moderately 
thoughtful  reader.  "  What  a  knowledge  of  human 
nature  you  must  have  acquired!"  has  been  said  to 
me,  with  a  touch  I  know,  of  sarcasm.  Perhaps 
I  might,  if  the  B's  had  not  tended  to  turn  the  A's 
out  of  my  head,  and  if  a  succinct  record  of  a 
man's  main  performances  were  the  same  thing  as 
a  knowledge  of  the  man  himself.  But  this  I  may 
say :  that  I  have  received  innumerable  suggestions 
for  thought,  and  had  many  vignettes  presented  to 
my  imagination,  which  to  a  man  of  any  thought 
or  imagination  should  have  been  full  of  interest. 
If,  that  is,  I  had  been  a  Macaulay,  I  should  have 
approximated  to  that  vivid  perception  of  the 
historical  panorama  which  he  had  to  construct 
by  assimilating  the  raw  materials  of  history. 
Macaulay  had  faults  which  have  been  so  fre- 
quently exposed,  that  the  critic  should  perhaps 
be  now  chiefly  anxious  to  insist  upon  his  astonish- 
ing power  in  his  own  province.  And  certainly,  I 
think  that,  though  we  should  wish  to  see  many 
aspects  of  history  to  which  Macaulay  was  blind, 
nothing  could  be  more  delightful  than  to  see 
the  past  as  clearly,  brightly,  and  graphically  as 
Macaulay  saw  it.  Nothing  but  a  prodigious 
memory  and  a  keen  imagination  could  enable 

VOI..  I — 3 


34  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

us  to  do  that.  But  the  dictionary  well  used,  read 
thoughtfully,  with  the  constant  attempt  to  put 
flesh  and  blood  upon  the  dry  skeleton  of  facts, 
will,  I  believe,  be  the  best  help  to  enable  any  one 
to  get  as  near  as  his  faculties  will  permit  to  that 
desirable  consummation.  And,  though  the  com- 
memorative instinct  may  not  be  fully  gratified,  I 
think  that  no  one  can  ramble  through  this  long 
gallery  without  storing  up  a  number  of  vivid 
images  of  the  lesser  luminaries,  which  will  have 
the  same  effect  upon  his  conceptions  of  history  as 
a  really  good  set  of  illustrations  upon  a  narrative 
of  travels.  And,  finally,  I  will  say,  what  has 
often  been  a  comfort  to  me  to  remember,  that 
great  as  is  the  difference  between  a  good  and  a 
bad  work  of  the  kind,  even  a  very  defective 
performance  is  immensely  superior  to  none  at  all. 


The  Evolution  of  Editors 

WHAT  is  an  editor ?  If  we  turn,  as  our  fathers 
would  have  turned,  to  Johnson's  Dictionary, 
we  shall  find  in  the  last  edition  published  during  his 
life  that  the  word  in  1785  meant  either  "publisher" 
simply,  or  editor  in  the  sense  in  which  the  name 
describes  Bentley's  relation  to  Horace  or  War- 
burton's  to  Pope.  The  editor,  that  is  as  implying 
the  commander  of  a  periodical,  is  not  yet  recog- 
nised, and  Johnson,  if  any  one,  would  not  have 
overlooked  him.  Dr.  Murray's  great  dictionary 
gives  1802  as  the  date  of  the  earliest  recorded  use 
of  the  word  in  the  now  familiar  sense.  The 
editor  is  regarded  by  most  authors  as  a  person 
whose  mission  is  the  suppression  of  rising  genius, 
or  as  a  traitor  who  has  left  their  ranks  to  help 
their  natural  enemy,  the  publisher.  Hateful  as 
he  may  be  in  himself,  he  is  an  interesting  figure 
in  the  annals  of  literature.  The  main  facts  are 
familiar  enough,  and  are  given  in  various  histories 
of  the  Press.1  Yet  I  have  found,  even  in  such 

»  I  may  especially  refer  to  the  last  of  t  ese,  Mr.  Fox  Bourne's 
History  of  Newspapers,  from  which  I  have  appropriated  some 
facts. 

36 


36  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

books,  phrases  which  seem  to  imply  a  misconcep- 
tion— allusions,  for  example,  to  the  "  editor  and 
staff  "  of  a  newspaper  in  the  days  of  Queen  Anne. 
Such  a  slip  occurs  in  the  most  perfect  presentment 
of  the  spirit  of  that  period,  Thackeray's  Esmond. 
Esmond  goes  to  see  the  printer  of  The  Postboy, 
and  in  the  house  encounters  Swift.  "  I  presume 
you  are  the  editor  of  The  Postboy,  sir?  "  says  Swift. 
"  I  am  but  a  contributor,"  replies  Esmond.  The 
scene  is  otherwise  quite  accurate,  but  Esmond,  in 
his  anxiety  to  be  smart  upon  Swift,  makes  an 
anachronism.  I  do  not  know  who  wrote  The 
Postboy  at  this  period  (1712),  but  it  was  shortly 
before  written  by  Abel  Boyer.  Boyer  was  a 
French  refugee  who  had  to  toil  in  Grub  Street  for 
his  living.  Some  of  his  painful  compilations  are 
still  known  to  antiquarians,  and  his  French 
dictionary,  or  a  dictionary  which  continued  to  pass 
under  his  name,  survived  till  quite  recently,  if  it  be 
not  still  extant.  He  was  employed  by  one  Roper1 
to  write  The  Postboy,  but  was  turned  off  in  1709. 
He  then  published  a  pathetic  appeal  to  the  public, 
pointing  out  that  the  wicked  Roper  had  made 
money  by  his  paper,  and  was  dismissing  him 
without  just  cause.  He  tried,  like  other  men  in 

>  In  Esmond,  the  printer  of  The  Postboy  is  Leach,  who 
really  printed  The  Postman.  Whether  Kemp,  the  writer 
mentioned  by  Thackeray,  was  a  real  person,  I  do  not  know. 


The  Evolution  of  Editors         37 

the  same  position,  to  carry  on  a  "true  "  Postboy, 
which,  if  ever  fairly  started,  has  vanished  from 
the  world.  What  kind  of  interviews  Boyer  was 
likely  to  have  with  Swift  may  be  guessed  from 
The  Journal  to  Stella.  Swift  calls  him  a  "  French 
dog  who  has  abused  me  in  a  pamphlet  "  ;  orders  a 
messenger  to  take  him  in  charge,  and  requests  St. 
John  to  "swinge  him."  Whoever  wrote  it  after- 
wards, The  Postboy  itself  was  a  "  tri-weekly  "  sheet 
which  would  go  comfortably  into  a  column  of 
The  Times.  Its  specialty,  due  probably  to  Boyer's 
French  origin,  was  its  foreign  correspondence, 
and  it  had  little  else.  The  whole,  as  a  rule,  seems 
to  have  been  made  up  of  little  paragraphs  extracted 
from  letters  giving  remarks  about  the  war,  and 
the  remaining  space  was  eked  out  by  half  a  dozen 
advertisements.  Boyer's  "  editing  "  was  all  done 
with  a  pair  of  scissors.  He  was  hardly  more  than 
a  clerk  employed  by  Roper  to  select  bits  of  news, 
and  probably  to  arrange  for  a  supply  of  the 
necessary  material. 

We  can  make  a  tolerably  distinct  picture  of  the 
Grub  Street  of  this  period.  The  street,  which 
not  long  ago  exchanged  its  ill-omened  name  for 
Milton  Street,  had  become  famous  in  the  days  of 
the  Civil  War,  when  the  abolition  of  the  Star 
Chamber  gave  a  chance  to  unlicensed  printers, 
and  the  appetite  for  news  was  naturally  at  its 


38  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

keenest.  When  order  was  restored  it  was  put 
under  restraint,  and  languished  dismally  through 
the  Restoration  period.  Roger  Lestrange  was  in- 
trusted, not  only  with  the  superintending  of  the 
one  official  organ,  but  with  power  of  suppressing 
every  rival.  He  acted  as  a  kind  of  detective,  and 
he  declares  that  he  spent  £500  a  year  in  main- 
taining "spies  for  information."  One  night,  in 
1663,  he  showed  his  zeal  by  arresting  a  wretched 
printer  called  Twyn.  Twyn,  whose  only  excuse 
was  that  he  was  the  father  of  three  poor  children, 
was  caught  in  the  act  of  printing  what  he  called 
"  some  mettlesome  stuff."  Though  the  stuff  was 
too  outrageous  to  be  fully  quoted  even  in  the 
reports  of  his  trial,  it  appears  to  have  asserted  that 
even  kings  should  be  responsible  to  their  people, 
a  doctrine  which  might  be  taken  to  hint  at  the 
popular  rising.  Twyn  was  sent  to  the  gallows  to 
clear  his  views  of  the  law  of  libel.  That  law,  so 
Scroggs  declared  in  1680,  was  that  to  "  publish 
any  newspaper  whatsoever  was  illegal,  and  showed 
a  manifest  intent  to  the  breach  of  the  peace." 
Although  this  doctrine  and  the  practice  which 
it  sanctioned  are  startling  enough  to  us,  they 
suggest  one  significant  remark.  The  accounts  of 
Twyn's  and  other  trials  at  the  time  prove  the 
infamy  of  Scroggs  and  his  like,  but  they  indirectly 
prove  also  the  advent  of  a  change.  The  reporter 


The  Evolution  of  Editors         39 

had  come  into  existence,  and  was  doing  his  work 
admirably.  The  proceedings  are  taken  down 
word  for  word,  and  the  scenes  are  often  so  vividly 
described  that  they  are  more  amusing,  because 
less  long-winded,  than  accounts  of  modern  trials. 
Macaulay  remarks  that  Wright  was  awed  at  the 
trial  of  the  seven  bishops  by  the  "thick  rows 
of  earls  and  barons."  The  reporter  contributed 
equally  to  the  remarkable  change  in  fairness  of 
trials  which  took  place  at  the  Revolution.  It 
was  to  be  a  long  time  before  he  could  force  his 
way  into  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons; 
but  his  influence  in  the  law-courts  was  percep- 
tible. *  The  Grub  Street  of  Boyer's  time  contained 
many  of  the  waifs  and  strays  from  this  period  of 
persecution.  In  wandering  through  that  dismal 
region  we  get  the  most  distinct  of  our  few  glimpses 
of  light  as  from  a  tallow  candle  held  by  the  crazy 
scribbler  John  Dunton.  Dunton,  a  descendant 
of -clergymen,  had  become  a  bookseller,  and  got 
into  various  intricate  troubles,  till,  as  he  tells  us, 
he  "  stooped  so  low  as  to  become  an  author,"  and 
sank  in  time  to  be  a  "  willing  and  everlasting 
drudge  to  the  quill"!  In  1705,  he  published 
his  Life  and  Errors,  a  book  which  makes  one  long 
to  ask  him  a  few  questions.  He  had  seen  many 

1  In  1764,  the  reporters  were  liable  to  be  turned  out  pf 
court.     See  State  Trials,  xiv.,  p.  35. 


40  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

people  of  whom  he  could  have  given  interesting 
"  reminiscences."  Unluckily  he  did  not  know 
in  what  posterity  would  be  interested.  We  do 
not  much  care  to  know  at  the  present  day  that 
Richard  Sault  was  in  all  probability  the  true 
author  of  the  Second  Spira,  a  book  of  which 
Dunton  sold  30,000  copies  in  six  weeks,  and 
which  he  now  requests  his  readers  to  burn  if  they 
meet  it.  I  have  never  had  the  chance  of  burning 
it,  and  cannot  account  for  his  remorse,  though  I 
hope  that  the  sale  was  some  consolation.  But, 
besides  this,  Dunton  had  published  the  Athenian 
Mercury,  a  sort  of  anticipatory  Notes  and  Queries, 
and  to  it  not  only  this  famous  Sault,  but  John 
Wesley's  father  and  Sir  William  Temple  and  Swift 
had  sent  contributions.  He  had  known,  too,  all 
the  booksellers,  printers,  binders,  engravers,  and 
hackney  authors  of  the  time,  and  gives  us  tantalis- 
ing glimpses  of  some  familiar  names.  He  has 
short  descriptions  of  considerably  over  a  hundred 
booksellers,  and  from  his  account  we  are  glad 
to  observe  that  they  already  showed  their  main 
characteristic — the  possession,  namely,  of  all  the 
cardinal  virtues.  He  enumerates  and  compliments 
all  the  writers  of  weekly  sheets.  Among  them  is 
Boyer,  whom  he  praises  for  the ' '  matchless  beauties 
of  his  style"  ;  De  Foe,  with  whom  he  had  unluckily 
a  running  quarrel,  and  who  is  therefore  men- 


The  Evolution  of  Editors         41 

tioned  with  less  warmth  than  inferior  rivals ;  and 
Tutchin,  whose  Observator  is  "  noways  inferior  "  to 
De  Foe's  Review.  Tutchin  was  the  famous  person 
who  was  sentenced  by  Jeffreys,  for  his  share  in 
Monmouth's  revolt,  to  a  punishment  of  such 
severity  that  he  petitioned  the  king  to  be  hanged 
instead.  His  petition  is  supposed  to  be  unique, 
and  his  prayer  was  not  granted.  Tutchin  escaped 
to  see  Jeffreys  in  the  Tower,  and  was  reported 
to  have  sent  him  a  halter  concealed  in  a  barrel 
of  oysters.  Tutchin  was  tried  in  1704  for  some 
of  his  Observators,  in  which  he  seems  to  have 
obscurely  hinted  that  there  might  be  some  corrup- 
tion in  the  navy.  He  escaped  in  consequence  of 
a  technical  blunder  in  the  indictment  unintelligible 
to  the  lay  reader,  but,  we  are  told,  was  afterwards 
assaulted  in  consequence  of  some  of  his  writings, 
and  so  cruelly  beaten  that  he  died  of  his  wounds. 
The  evidence  on  his  trial  shows  clearly  what  a 
leading  newspaper  was  in  those  days.  Tutchin 
had  agreed  with  the  printer  to  write  a  weekly 
paper  for  which  he  was  to  receive  IDS.  6d.  a  time. 
The  number  printed  was  266,  and  we  are  glad  to 
hear  that  the  printer  raised  his  price  in  time  to  203. 
The  printer  incidentally  admits  that  he  had  him- 
self done  such  "editing  "  as  was  necessary;  that  is, 
had  struck  out  phrases  which  seemed  to  be  libellous. 
De  Foe  and  his  rival  Tutchin  differed  from 


42  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Boyer  in  this,  that  their  papers  were  in  reality 
weekly  pamphlets,  or  consisted  mainly  of  the 
matter  which  would  now  be  made  into  leading 
articles.  Tutchin  and  De  Foe  were  sound  Whigs, 
though  De  Foe's  Whiggism  had  to  make  awkward 
compromises  with  his  interests.  Their  chief  oppo- 
nent was  the  vigorous  non- juror  and  voluminous 
controversialist  Charles  Leslie,  a  martyr  to  High 
Church  principles,  who  had  to  live  partly  by  his 
pen,  and  from  1706  to  1709  published  The  Re- 
hearsal on  the  side  of  unflinching  Jacobitism. 
He  escaped  a  trial  for  treason  by  retiring  to  St. 
Germains.  The  author  had  always  to  keep  one 
eye  upon  the  Attorney-General,  and  Grub  Street 
was  a  Cave  of  Adullam  for  broken  men,  ruined  in 
trade  or  political  troubles,  who  could  just  keep 
body  and  soul  together  by  these  productions.  They 
were  "  authors,"  not  "  editors  "  of  their  papers, 
and  TJie  Review,  or  Observator,  or  Rehearsal  were 
simply  the  personal  utterances  of  De  Foe,  Tutchin, 
and  Leslie.  Whether  De  Foe,  like  Tutchin,  was 
paid  by  his  printer,  or  whether,  as  seems  more 
probable  in  so  keen  a  man  of  business,  he  employed 
the  printer,  is  more  than  I  know.  In  the  later 
years  of  his  troublesome  life,  he  was  at  one  time 
in  a  position  of  respectability,  with  a  comfortable 
house  and  garden,  and  able  to  provide  a  portion 
for  his  daughter.  But  De  Foe  was  exceptional. 


The  Evolution  of  Editors         43 

Meanwhile  the  plan  had  been  adopted  in  a  higher 
sphere.  Steele  is  distinguished  in  one  of  the  lists 
of  authors  as  a  "  gentleman  born."  The  official 
Gazette  had  been  intrusted  to  him  with  a  liberal 
salary  of  ^300  a  year,  and,  as  we  all  know,  in 
1709  he  started  The  Taller,  which  became  the 
lineal  ancestor  of  The  Spectator  and  the  long  series 
of  British  Essayists.  All  the  best-known  authors 
of  the  eighteenth  century  tried  their  hands  at  this 
form  of  composition,  as  our  grandmothers  and 
great-grandmothers  had  good  cause  to  know. 
The  essays  were  lay  sermons,  whose  authors  con- 
descended, it  was  supposed,  to  turn  from  grave 
studies  of  philosophy  or  politics  to  topics  at  once 
edifying  and  intelligible  to  the  weaker  sex.  Many 
of  these  series  implied  joint-stock  authorship,  and 
therefore  some  kind  of  editing.  We  know,  for 
example,  how  Steele  was  ill-advised  enough  to 
insert  in  The  Guardian  a  paper  by  his  young 
admirer  Pope,  which  ostensibly  puffed  their 
common  friend  Philips's  Pastorals,  but  under  a 
thin  cover  of  irony  contrived  to  compare  them  very 
unfavourably  with  his  own  rival  performances. 
Pope  and  Philips  lived  afterwards,  as  Johnson 
puts  it,  in  a  perpetual  "  reciprocation  of  malevo- 
lence "  ;  and  the  editor  no  doubt  had  already 
discovered  that  there  might  be  thorns  in  his 
pillow.  In  those  happy  days,  too,  when  the 


44  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

"Rev.  Mr.  Grove  "  could  win  immortality  on  the 
strength  of  three  or  four  papers  in  The  Spectator, 
Steele  must  no  doubt  have  had  to  deal  in  some  of 
the  diplomacy  which  is  a  modern  editor's  defence 
against  unwelcome  volunteers.  But  he  held  no 
recognised  office.  When  he  got  Addison  to  help 
him  in  The  Tatler,  he  resembled,  according  to  his 
familiar  phrase,  the  "  distressed  prince  who  calls 
in  a  powerful  neighbour  to  his  aid."  To  use  a 
humbler  comparison,  he  was  more  like  the  preacher 
who  asks  a  friend  to  occupy  his  pulpit  for 
a  Sunday  or  two,  and  finds  his  assistant's  ser- 
mon more  popular  than  his  own.  Addison 
and  Steele  appear  to  have  started  The  Spectator  in 
alliance,  and  they  sold  the  right  of  publication 
when  it  was  collected  in  a  new  form.  The 
precedent  was  often  followed  by  little  knots  of 
friends,  and  some  one,  of  course,  would  have  to  do 
such  editing  as  was  wanted.  One  result  is  char- 
acteristic. There  was  as  yet  no  "We."  The 
writer  of  an  essay  had  therefore  to  speak  of  himself 
in  the  first  person ;  and  as  the  first  person  was  not 
the  individual  writer,  but  the  writer  in  his  capacity 
as  essayist,  an  imaginary  author  was  invented. 
Hence  arose  the  Spectator  himself,  and  Nestor 
Ironside  and  Caleb  Danvers  and  their  like.  The 
last  representatives  of  the  fashion  were  Sylvanus 
Urban  of  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  and  Oliver 


The  Evolution  of  Editors          45 

Yorke  of  Fraser's,  if  indeed  "  Mr.  Punch"  is  not 
a  legitimate  descendant.  The  fictitious  author 
was  a  kind  of  mask  to  be  worn  by  each  actor  in 
turn.  But  of  course  periodicals  of  this  kind, 
which  consisted  of  nothing  but  an  essay  supplied 
by  some  author  with  occasional  help  from  his 
friends,  required  no  definite  editor.  Afterwards 
they  frequently  appeared  as  a  series  of  articles 
in  one  of  the  magazines,  and  had  less  of  an  inde- 
pendent existence.  For  the  main  origin  of  the 
editor  we  must,  then,  go  back  to  Grub  Street. 
One  point  must  be  noticed.  Between  Grub  Street 
and  these  higher  circles  of  elegant  authorship 
there  was  little  communication,  and  certainly  no 
love  lost.  The  modern  author  has  sometimes 
looked  fondly  back  to  the  period  of  Queen  Anne 
as  a  golden  epoch  when  literature  received  its 
proper  reward.  Macaulay  speaks  of  the  next 
years  as  a  time  when  the  author  fell,  as  it  were, 
between  two  stools — when  he  had  lost  the  patron 
and  not  been  taken  up  by  the  public.  This, 
I  think,  suggests  an  inaccurate  view.  Grub 
Street  had  never  basked  in  the  sunshine  of 
patronage.  Its  denizens  had  few  interviews  with 
great  men,  unless  they  were  such  as  Boyer  had 
with  Swift  or  Twyn  with  Lestrange.  The  "  hack- 
ney author,"  as  Dunton  already  calls  him,  was 
simply  a  nuisance  to  be  suppressed  unless  he 


46  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

could  be  used  as  a  spy.  A  few  men  of  education 
drifted  into  the  miserable  street ;  Royalist  divines 
(like  Fuller)  under  the  Commonwealth,  and 
ejected  ministers  such  as  Baxter  under  Charles  II. 
Baxter  tells  us  that  he  managed  by  ceaseless 
writing  to  make  £70  a  year,  and,  now  and  then, 
such  men  were  helped  by  some  sympathetic  friend 
in  power.  But  patronage,  beyond  an  occasional 
bribe,  or  possibly  a  payment  of  hush-money, 
generally  descended,  if  it  descended  at  all,  upon 
others  than  the  true  Grub  Street  author.  The 
great  men  of  the  seventeenth  century  now  and 
then  acted  as  patrons;  the  two  greatest  English 
thinkers  of  the  time,  Hobbes  and  Locke,  were 
supported  by  the  Earls  of  Devonshire  and  Shaftes- 
bury.  Some  patronage  was  bestowed  upon  Dry- 
den  and  the  poets,  though  they  do  not  seem  to 
have  considered  it  over-liberal.  Butler  and  Otway 
are  the  typical  examples  of  their  fate.  Still, 
a  nobleman  often  felt  bound  to  send  his  twenty 
guineas  in  return  for  a  dedication.  Learned 
men,  too,  in  the  Church  might  of  course  hope 
for  professional  preferment.  But  all  this  was 
no  comfort  to  the  bookseller's  drudge,  and  he 
got  no  benefits  of  this  kind  from  the  Revolu- 
tion. What  then  happened  was,  I  take  it,  very 
simple.  The  great  man,  thanks  to  the  growth 
of  parliamentary  power,  suddenly  found  himself 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  47 

enabled  to  be  a  patron  at  the  public  expense. 
Naturally  he  was  suddenly  seized  with  a  fit  of 
liberality.  The  famous  writers  of  Queen  Anne's 
day — Addison,  and  Congreve,  and  Prior,  and 
their  friends — became  commissioners  of  excise,  of 
hackney  coaches,  and  so  forth,  or  found  shelter  in 
other  pleasant  little  offices,  then  newly  created,  of 
which  Ministers  could  dispose.  Such  patronage 
was,  of  course,  not  given  for  abstruse  learning; 
scholars  and  antiquaries  were  not  sought  out  in 
their  studies  or  college  lecture-rooms,  or  enabled 
to  pursue  recondite  researches.  Still  less  did  it 
come  to  Grub  Street.  The  recipients  of  the 
golden  shower  were  "Wits,"  or  men  known  in 
"  the  town,"  which  was  no  longer  overshadowed  by 
the  Court.  They  were  selected  from  the  agreeable 
companions  at  one  of  the  newly  invented  clubs, 
where  statesmen  could  relax  over  their  claret  and 
brush  up  their  schoolboy  recollections  of  Horace 
and  Homer.  Halifax,  Harley,  and  St.  John 
could  give  a  few  crumbs  from  their  table  to  the 
men  whom  they  met  at  the  Kit-Kat  or  the  Broth- 
ers' Club.  Swift  hoped  to  be  the  founder  of  an 
academy  which  should  direct  patronage  to  men 
of  letters,  and  the  anecdotes  of  his  attempts  to 
help  his  poorer  brethren  show  the  most  creditable 
side  of  his  character.  The  pleasant  time  dis- 
appeared for  an  obvious  reason.  In  the  reign  of 


48  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Queen  Anne  the  system  of  Party  Government  was 
substantially  got  into  working  order.  That  meant 
that  offices  were  no  longer  to  be  given  away 
for  ornamental  purposes,  but  used  for  practical 
business.  Swift  called  Walpole  "  Bob,  the  poet's 
foe,"  for  his  indifference  to  literary  merit;  but 
Walpole  was  the  name  of  a  system.  Places 
were  wanted  to  exchange  for  votes,  and  a  writer 
of  plays  and  essays  was  not  worth  buying  unless 
he  were  proprietor  or  hanger-on  of  the  proprietor 
of  a  borough.  As  soon  as  this  was  clearly  under- 
stood, the  patronage  of  men  of  letters  went  out  of 
fashion,  and  I  greatly  doubt  whether  literature  was 
any  the  worse  for  the  change. 

Grub  Street,  at  any  rate,  had  been  little  affected 
by  the  gleam  of  good  fortune  which  came  to  the 
upper  circles,  and  was  not  hurt  by  its  disappear- 
ance. The  prizes  bestowed  upon  the  gentlemen 
and  scholars  who  could  write  "  Spectator  "  were 
above  the  reach  of  Tutchin  or  De  Foe.  They  had, 
indeed,  reaped  some  rather  questionable  advan- 
tages from  the  political  change  besides  the  aboli- 
tion of  licensing.  Harley  was  the  first  English 
statesman  to  use  the  Press  systematically.  Under 
his  management  the  Grub  Street  authors  ceased  to 
be  simply  vermin  to  be  hunted  down ;  they  might 
be  themselves  used  in  the  chase.  Harley's  name 
constantly  turns  up  in  this  dismal  region;  he 


The  Evolution  of  Editors          49 

saved  Boyer  from  Swift's  wrath;  he  appears  in 
the  background  of  other  obscure  careers,  such  as 
that  of  the  deist  Toland;  and  he  is  specially 
memorable  for  his  connection  with  two  of  the 
greatest  of  English  journalists,  Swift  and  De  Foe. 
Swift,  of  course,  was  petted  as  an  equal,  and  flat- 
tered by  hopes  of  a  bishopric ;  while  De  Foe  was 
treated  as  an  "  underspurleather,"  a  mere  agent 
who  could  be  handed  over  by  Whig  to  Tory  and 
Tory  to  Whig  as  the  Ministry  changed.  Each  of 
them,  however,  wrote  what  passed  for  his  own 
individual  utterance.  The  Examiner,  while  Swift 
wrote  it,  represented  Swift,  as  The  Review  repre- 
sented De  Foe.  The  papers  were  not  like  modern 
party  newspapers,  complex  organisms  with  editors 
and  proprietors  and  contributors,  but  simply 
periodical  pamphlets  by  a  single  author,  though 
their  utterances  might  be  more  or  less  inspired  by 
the  Government.  The  system  was  carried  on 
through  the  Walpole  period,  but  a  change  soon 
begins  dimly  to  show  itself.  A  new  race  is  arising, 
called  by  Ralph,  one  of  themselves,  "  authors  by 
profession,"  most  of  whose  names  are  familiar 
only  to  profound  commentators  upon  the  Dunciad. 
The  notes  to  that  work  were,  as  was  said,  the 
regular  place  of  execution  for  the  victims  of  Pope 
and  the  blustering  Warburton.  Ralph,  says  War- 
burton  in  one  of  them,  "  ended  in  the  common 

VOL.  1-4 


50  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

sink  of  all  such  writers,  a  political  newspaper." 
Although  that  represented  the  lowest  stage  of 
human  existence,  there  were  some  pickings  to 
be  had  even  there.  The  statement  made  by  a 
Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  is  often 
quoted,  that  in  ten  years  Walpole  spent  over 
^50,000  upon  the  Press;  over  ^10,000  going 
to  one  Arnall,  probably  in  part  to  be  transmitted 
to  others.  That,  as  we  are  told,  was  the  flourishing 
period  of  corruption,  and  if  authors  got  their 
share  of  it  their  morals  doubtless  suffered.  And 
yet  we  may  say,  if  we  will  not  be  too  puritanical, 
that  even  a  capacity  for  receiving  bribes  may  imply 
a  relative  improvement.  A  man  who  can  be 
bribed  can  generally  make  a  bargain;  he  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  simple  spy.  De  Foe  was  a  slave 
to  Ministers,  who  kept  his  conviction  hanging  over 
his  head,  and  just  gave  him  scraps  enough  to 
support  him  in  the  dirty  work  which  he  tried,  very 
hard  it  seems,  but  not  quite  successfully,  to  re- 
concile to  his  conscience.  Ralph  was  evidently 
treated  with  relative  respect.  His  moral  standard 
is  defined  by  Bubb  Dodington.  Ralph,  says  that 
type  of  political  jobbery,  was  "  a  very  honest  man." 
This,  as  Dodington's  account  of  him  shows — with 
no  sense  of  incongruity — was  quite  compatible 
with  a  readiness  to  sell  himself  to  any  party.  It 
only  meant  that  he  kept  the  bargain  for  the  time. 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  5 l 

Honesty,  that  is,  did  not  imply  so  quixotic  a 
principle  as  adherence  to  political  principles,  but 
adherence  for  the  time  being  to  the  man  who  had 
bought  you ;  and  even  that  naturally  appeared  an 
exceptionally  lofty  strain  to  Dodington.  Ralph 
himself  complains  bitterly  of  the  niggardly  patron- 
age of  literature,  but  he  ended  with  a  pension  of 
£600  a  year.  Among  his  allies  and  enemies  were 
men  like  Amhurst  and  Arnall  and  Concanen  and 
others,  who,  chiefly  again  through  references  in  the 
Dunciad,  have  got  their  names  into  biographical 
dictionaries.  Some  of  them  gained  humble  re- 
wards. Amhurst,  a  clever  writer,  who  began, 
like  Shelley,  by  expulsion  from  Oxford,  seems  to 
represent  the  nearest  approach  to  the  modern 
editor.  As  "  Caleb  Danvers,"  imaginary  author  of 
The  Craftsman,  he  received  the  most  brilliant 
political  writing  of  the  day  from  Bolingbroke, 
Pulteney,  and  the  "  patriots  "  ;  and  Ralph  declares 
that  he  died  of  a  broken  heart  when,  upon  Wai- 
pole's  fall,  his  services  met  with  no  reward  from 
his  friends.  The  Craftsman  was  itself  on  The 
Spectator  or  Examiner  model;  but,  as  a  party 
organ,  inspired  and  partly  written  by  the  leaders 
of  the  Opposition,  it  had  something  of  the  position 
of  a  modern  newspaper ;  and  Amhurst,  no  doubt, 
though  in  a  very  dependent  position,  may  be 
regarded  as  a  humble  forerunner  of  the  full-blown 
editor  of  later  days. 


5  2  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  comparative  calm  of 
the  political  atmosphere  under  Walpole  was  fa- 
vourable to  another  direction  of  literary  develop- 
ment.     De  Foe  found  time  for  the  multitudinous 
activities  which  entitle  him  to  be  a  great-grand- 
father of  all  modern  journalism.     He  helped  to 
start  newspapers ;  he  published  secret  documents ; 
he  interviewed  Jack  Sheppard  at  the  foot  of  the 
gallows;    he   collected  ghost  stories;    he   wrote 
accounts  of  worthy  dissenting  divines  recently 
deceased ;  he  wrote  edifying  essays  upon  the  devil 
and  things  in  general;   he  described  tours  in  the 
country;    he  passed  Robinson  Crusoe  through  a 
journal  like  a  modern  feuilleton,  and,  in  short,  he 
opened  almost  every  vein  of  periodical  literature 
that  has  been  worked  by  his  successors.     As  the 
time  goes  on  we  find  authors  who  really  make  a 
decent  living  by  their  pens.     There  is  John  Camp- 
bell, for  example,  the  richest  author,  according  to 
Johnson,  "  who  ever  grazed  the  common  of  lit- 
erature "  ;  the  "  pious  "  gentleman  on  the  same 
authority,  who,  though  he  never  entered  a  church, 
never  passed  one  without  taking  off  his  hat.     And 
to  speak  of  still  living  names,  we  have  Richardson, 
who  had  the  good  luck  to  be  printer  as  well  as 
author,  and  Fielding,  forced  to  choose  between 
being  a  hackneyed  author  or  a  hackneyed  coach- 
man, and  Johnson,  who  was  presently  to  proclaim, 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  53 

as  Carlyle  puts  it,  the  "  blast  of  doom  "  of  patron- 
age. The  profession,  or  at  least  the  trade,  is  begin- 
ning to  be  established,  and  there  will  naturally  be  a 
demand  for  editing.  The  author  of  the  loftier 
sphere  still  laboured  under  the  delusion  that  it  was 
unworthy  of  him  to  take  money  for  his  works. 
Swift,  as  he  tells  us,  never  made  anything,  till  the 
judicious  advice  of  Pope  brought  something  for  his 
Miscellanies.  Pope  himself,  though  he  made  his 
fortune  by  his  Homer,  is  hardly  an  exception. 
The  sums  which  he  received,  indeed,  enabled  him 
to  live  at  his  ease,  but  they  were  the  product  of 
a  subscription,  and,  I  fancy,  of  such  a  subscription 
as  has  never  been  surpassed.  The  good  society  of 
those  days  held,  and  deserves  credit  for  holding 
that  it  would  do  well  to  give  a  kind  of  national 
commission  to  the  most  rising  young  poet  of 
the  day  to  produce  a  worthy  translation  of  the 
accepted  masterpiece  of  poetry.  It  was  a  piece  of 
joint-stock  patronage,  and  not  a  successful  pub- 
lishing speculation — though  it  succeeded  in  that 
sense  also — by  which  Pope  made  his  fortune. 
Grub  Street,  therefore,  would  rejoice  little  in  a 
success  which  scarcely  suggested  even  a  precedent 
for  imitation,  and  which  fell  to  the  man  who  was 
its  deadliest  enemy.  Pope,  with  his  excessive 
sensibility,  was  stung  by  its  taunts  to  that  war 
with  the  dunces  which  led  to  his  most  elaborate 


54  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and  least  creditable  piece  of  work.  Though  the 
bulk  of  his  adversaries  was  obscure  enough,  the 
body  collectively  is  beginning  to  raise  its  head  a 
little.  The  booksellers,  from  Lintot  and  Tonson 
down  to  the  disreputable  Curll,  are  indulging  in  a 
variety  of  speculations  from  which  the  form  of 
modern  periodical  literature  begins  to  emerge 
distinctly.  One  symptom  is  remarkable.  At  the 
beginning  of  1731,  the  ingenious  Cave,  having 
bought  a  small  printing-office,  started  The  Gen- 
tleman's Magazine,  destined  to  have  a  long  life 
and  to  be  followed  by  many  imitators.  It  had 
various  obscure  precursors,  such  as  The  Historical 
Register,  and  at  first  was  a  humble  affair  enough. 
Most  of  its  pages  were  filled  with  reproductions 
of  articles  from  the  weekly  journals;  but  it 
included  brief  notices  of  books,  and  occasional 
poems  and  records  of  events  and  miscellaneous 
literature;  and,  in  short,  was  complex  enough  to 
require  a  judicious  editor.  Johnson  tells  how 
Cave,  when  he  had  heard  that  one  subscriber  out 
of  the  10,000  whom  he  speedily  attracted  was 
likely  to  drop  the  magazine,  would  say,  "  Let  us 
have  something  good  in  the  next  number."  No- 
thing more  could  be  required  to  prove  that  Cave 
had  the  true  editorial  spirit.  Still,  however,  the 
editor,  was  not  and  for  a  long  time  he  was  not  to 
be,  differentiated  from  the  proprietor.  Cave  him- 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  55 

self  looked  after  every  detail.  He  arranged  for 
the  parliamentary  reports  (a  plan  in  which  his 
first  predecessor  appears  to  have  been  our  old 
friend  Boyer  in  his  monthly  Political  State},  and 
employed  the  famous  reporter  who  clothed  the 
utterances  of  every  orator  of  those  days  in  sono- 
rous Johnsonese.  The  success  of  The  Gentleman's 
Magazine  probably  led  to  The  Monthly  Review, 
started  by  Ralph  Griffiths  in  1749,  and  as  this  was 
of  a  Whiggish  turn,  it  was  opposed  by  The  Critical 
Review,  started  by  Archibald  Hamilton  in  1756, 
and  supported  by  Smollett;  a  sequence  like  that 
of  TJie  Edinburgh  and  Quarterly  Reviews.  These 
two  were  the  first,  and  till  The  Edinburgh  Review, 
the  leading  representatives  of  literary  criticism. 
Both  of  them  were  edited  by  the  publishers. 
Griffiths,  in  particular,  is  famous  as  the  taskmaster 
of  Goldsmith.  When  a  publisher  has  to  do  with 
a  man  of  genius,  especially  with  a  man  of  genius 
over  whom  it  is  proper  to  be  sentimental,  he  may 
be  pretty  certain  of  contemptuous  treatment  by 
the  biographers  of  his  client.  Yet  it  is  possible 
that  even  Griffiths  had  something  to  say  for  him- 
self, and  that  if  he  was  a  hard  master,  Goldsmith 
may  not  have  been  a  very  business-like  sub- 
ordinate. Still,  as  Griffiths  is  said  to  have  made 
£2000  a  year  by  a  venture  to  which  Goldsmith 
only  owed  a  bare  escape  from  starvation,  the 


56  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

printer  may  have  been  of  opinion  that  the  imme- 
diate profit  was  worth  a  good  deal  of  posthumous 
abuse.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  noticeable  that 
the  men  of  letters  who  appear  in  BoswelTs  great 
portrait  gallery  had  no  haven  of  editorship  to 
drift  into.  They  might  be  employed  by  the  pub- 
lisher of  a  magazine,  and  no  doubt  their  drudgery 
would  involve  some  of  the  work  of  a  modern 
editor.  But  there  was  no  such  pillow  for  the 
wearied  author  as  a  regular  office  with  a  fixed 
income  and  the  occupation  of  trimming  other 
people's  works  instead  of  painfully  straining 
matter  from  your  own  brain.  Good  service  to  a 
political  patron,  or  very  rarely  some  other  merit, 
might  be  paid  by  a  pension;  but,  without  one, 
even  Johnson,  the  acknowledged  dictator  of  letters 
in  his  time,  would  apparently  have  never  escaped 
from  the  writer's  treadmill.  He  was  never,  it 
would  seem,  more  than  a  month  or  two  ahead  of 
the  friends  who  have  become  types  of  the  Grub 
Street  author:  Smart,  who  let  himself  for  ninety- 
nine  years  to  a  bookseller,  or  Boyse,  whose  only 
clothing  was  a  blanket  with  holes  in  it  through 
which  his  hands  protruded  to  manufacture  verses. 
Perhaps  the  Secretary  of  the  Literary  Fund  could 
produce  parallels  even  at  the  present  day,  and  the 
increase  in  the  prizes  has  certainly  not  diminished 
the  number  of  blanks.  Meanwhile,  political 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  57 

journalism  was  coming  to  fresh  life  with  the 
agitation  of  the  early  days  of  George  III.  The 
North  Briton,  in  which  Wilkes  began  his  warfare, 
was  a  weekly  periodical  pamphlet  after  The 
Craftsman  fashion,  started  at  a  week's  notice  to 
meet  Smollett's  Briton,  and  written  chiefly  by 
Wilkes  with  help  from  Churchill.  It  had  a  short 
and  stormy  life,  and  was  not  properly  a  news- 
paper. But  when  Wilkes  fought  his  later  cam- 
paign, and  was  backed  by  Junius,  we  have  at  last  a 
genuine  example  of  a  newspaper  warfare  of  the 
modern  kind.  The  Public  Advertiser  had  a  signifi- 
cant history.  It  was  the  new  form  of  The  Daily 
Post  started  in  1 7 19  by  (or  with  the  help  of)  De  Foe. 
The  Woodfall  family,  well  known  till  the  end  of  the 
century  came  to  have  the  chief  share  in  it;  and, 
in  1752,  gave  it  a  new  name  and  form,  when 
Fielding  seems  to  have  acted  more  or  less  as 
sponsor.  Upon  dropping  a  periodical  of  his  own, 
he  advised  his  subscribers  to  transfer  their  favours 
to  this  paper,  to  which,  moreover,  he  sent  all  his 
own  advertisements,  one  as  Justice  of  the  Peace. 
Probably  the  recommendation  means  that  it  had 
somehow  been  made  worth  Fielding's  while  to  let 
the  paper  have  a  monopoly  of  these  notices.  It 
seems  that  fifteen  years  previously,  the  value  of 
the  paper  was  about  £840.  By  the  Junius  period, 
twenty  years  later,  this  had  considerably  increased. 


58  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

The  property  was  held  in  shares,  chiefly  by  well- 
known  booksellers  and  printers.  A  tenth  be- 
longed to  Henry  Sampson  Woodfall,  who  took 
the  management  from  1758,  when  his  father  died, 
and  acted  as  editor  for  thirty-five  years.  The 
circulation  in  the  Junius  period  was  about  3000 
daily,  and  in  1774  (just  after  Junius  had  ceased), 
the  profits  were  ^1740.  The  accounts  which 
have  been  preserved  show  the  general  nature  of 
the  business.  The  expenses,  other  than  printing, 
included  £200  paid  to  the  theatres  for  advertise- 
ments of  plays,  an  item  which  has  long  got  to  the 
other  side  of  the  account;  £280  for  home  news; 
and  smaller  sums  for  foreign  intelligence,  and  so 
forth.  Nothing  is  set  down  for  editor  or  con- 
tributors, and  the  obvious  reason  is  that  neither 
class  existed.  The  contributors  were  some  of 
the  poor  scribblers  of  Grub  Street  who  collected 
material  for  paragraphs,  or  at  times  indulged  in 
small  political  squibs.  Contemporary  portraits 
of  the  professional  journalists  of  those  days  may 
be  found  in  Foote's  farces.1  They  are  poor 
wretches,  dependent  upon  "Vamp"  the  bookseller, 
or  "Index"  the  printer;  living  in  garrets,  em- 
ployed as  hawkers  of  scandal,  domestic  and 
official,  rising  during  the  parliamentary  session 

1  See  The  Author  (1757),  and  The  Bankrupt  (1776). 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  59 

to  political  abuse,  and  in  the  recess  picking  up 
accounts  of  "  remarkable  effects  of  thunder  and 
lightning."  "All  is  filth  that  comes  to  their  net," 
observes  one  of  the  characters,  and,  in  any  case, 
they  represent  the  class  of  labour  which  now 
fills  up  the  interstices  of  more  serious  writing. 
Tlie  Ptiblic  Advertiser,  however,  was  by  no  means 
composed  of  such  matter.  If  Woodfall  had 
to  pay  the  theatres  instead  of  being  paid  by 
them,  he  got  his  contributors  for  nothing.  The 
volunteer  correspondent  was  apparently  as  abun- 
dant then  as  now,  and  the  paper  is  chiefly  filled 
by  his  lucubrations.  Woodfall,  who  seems  to 
have  been  a  worthy  man,  prided  himself  especially 
upon  his  impartiality.  He  accepted  letters  from 
all  sides,  and  the  paper,  though  without  leading 
articles,  was  full  of  lively  controversy  upon  all  the 
leading  topics  of  the  day;  Junius,  of  course, 
during  his  short  career,  being  the  most  effective 
writer.  Naturally,  the  paper  required  editing,  and 
in  a  very  serious  sense.  Woodfall  was  respon- 
sible when  Junius  assailed  George  III.,  and  had  to 
keep  a  very  sharp  eye  upon  the  performances  of  his 
anonymous  contributors.  Still,  however,  though 
in  point  of  fact  an  editor,  he  was  primarily  the 
managing  partner  of  a  business.  Probably,  he 
would  receive  some  extra  share  of  the  profits  in 
that  capacity,  and  would  come  very  near  to  being 


60          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

an  editor  in  the  modern  sense1.  We  are  told 
about  this  time  that  William  Dodd,  the  popular 
preacher  who  was  hanged  for  forgery  in  1777,  had 
"descended  so  low  as  to  become  editor  of  a  news- 
paper"— a  degrading  position  which  would  account 
for  a  clergyman  reaching  the  gallows.  Still  the 
genuine  editor  has  not  as  yet  become  a  distinct 
personage.  Between  this  time  and  the  revolu- 
tionary period  several  of  the  papers  were  started 
which  were  to  be  the  main  organs  of  public  opinion 
down  to  our  own  day.  On  November  13,  1776, 
Horace  Walpole  looked  out  of  his  window  and  saw 
a  body  of  men  marching  down  Picadilly — vol- 
unteers, he  guessed  for  service  in  the  American 
troubles.  He  was  more  astonished  than  we  should 
be  on  discovering  that  they  were  simply  "  sand- 
wich men,"  or  at  least  men  with  papers  in  their 
caps  or  bills  in  their  hands,  advertising  a  news- 
paper. Henry  Bate  Dudley ,  the ' '  fighting  parson , ' ' 
who  lived  to  become  a  baronet  and  a  canon  of 
Ely,  was  at  this  time  chaplain  to  Lord  Lyttleton 
and  employing  his  leisure  in  writing  plays,  fight- 
ing duels,  or  carrying  on  The  Morning  Post.  It 
had  begun  four  years  earlier,  and  Bate  was  now 
appealing  for  support  against  a  rival  who  was 

1  A  ledger  of  The  Public  Advertiser,  from  1766  to  1771,  is 
now  in  the  Free  Library  at  Chelsea,  to  which  it  was  presented 
by  Sir  C.  Dilke. 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  61 

starting  a  new  Morning  Post.  Bate,  as  Walpole 
says,  is  "author"  (still  not  editor)  of  the  old 
Morning  Post;  and  in  1780  he  left  it  to  set  up 
The  Morning  Herald  in  opposition.  A  duel  or 
two  and  a  confinement  for  a  year  in  the  King's 
Bench  prison  varied  his  amusements.  Walpole 
moralises  after  his  fashion  upon  the  "expensive 
masquerade  exhibited  by  a  clergyman  in  defence 
of  daily  scandal  against  women  of  the  highest 
rank,  in  the  midst  of  a  civil  war"!  I  do  not  know 
how  far  The  Morning  Post  deserved  this  impu- 
tation; but  its  history  shortly  afterwards  brings 
us  within  reach  of  the  modern  system.  Three 
men  in  particular  played  a  great  part  in  the  trans- 
formation of  the  newspaper;-  two  of  them,  as 
might  be  anticipated,  were  energetic  young  Scots, 
and  one  of  these  came  from  Aberdeen,  the  centre, 
as  many  of  its  inhabitants  have  told  me,  whence 
spread  all  good  things.  Perry,  Stuart,  and 
Walter  were  these  creators  of  the  modern  news- 
paper, and  their  history  shows  how  the  "able 
editor"  finally  came  to  life.  The  first  Walter 
was  a  bookseller,  who  thought  that  he  could  turn 
to  account  an  invention  called  "logography"  (the 
types  were  to  be  whole  words  instead  of  letters) 
by  printing  a  newspaper.  Though  the  invention 
failed,  the  newspaper  lived  for  a  short  time  as 
The  Universal  Register,  and  became  The  Times 


62  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

on  January  i,  1788.  Walter's  first  declarations 
show  how  accurately  he  had  divined  the  conditions 
of  success.  His  ideal  paper  was  to  give  some- 
thing for  all  tastes;  it  was  not  to  be  merely 
commercial  nor  merely  political,  it  was  to  represent 
public  opinion  generally,  not  any  particular  party, 
and  it  was  never  "to  offend  the  ear  of  delicacy." 
When  it  had  survived  logography  and  obtained  its 
incomparable  monosyllabic  name,  it  was  fitted  for 
a  successful  career.  The  war,  though  an  ill  wind 
enough,  blew  prosperity  to  newspapers,  as  the 
wars  of  the  Great  Rebellion  and  of  Queen  Anne's 
day  had  given  fresh  impulse  to  their  infancy 
and  boyhood.  Walter,  too,  and  his  son,  who 
took  the  helm  in  1802,  were  keen  in  applying 
mechanical  improvements  and  organising  the  new 
machinery.  The  Times  seems  to  have  invented 
the  foreign  correspondent,  its  representative, 
Henry  Crabb  Robinson,  being  probably  the  first 
specimen  of  the  genus :  it  beat  the  Government  in 
getting  the  first  news  of  battles,  and  defeated  a 
strike  of  the  printers  in  order  to  introduce  a  new 
method  of  printing.  The  younger  Walter,  how 
ever,  seems  still  to  have  combined  the  functions  of 
editor  and  proprietor  until  1810,  when  Sir  John 
Stoddart  became  editor.  Stoddart  was  succeeded 
by  Barnes  in  1817,  and  Barnes  in  1841  by  Delane, 
when  editorship  had  become  not  only  a  separate 


The  Evolution  of  Editors          63 

function,  but  a  position  of  high  political  im- 
portance. James  Perry,  meanwhile,  had  come  into 
the  profession  from  a  different  side.  He  had 
been  early  thrown  upon  his  own  resources,  and 
about  1777,  sent  some  articles  to  a  newspaper 
which  gained  him  employment  at  the  rate  of  a 
guinea  and  a  half  a  week.  He  soon  rose  to  a 
better  position.  The  Morning  Chronicle  had  been 
started  in  1769  by  William  Woodfall  (younger 
brother  of  Henry  Sampson),  who  gained  the  nick- 
name "Memory  Woodfall"  from  his  powers  of 
bringing  back  debates  in  his  head.  His  reports 
became  the  great  feature  of  The  Chronicle  \  but 
Perry,  who  was  getting  four  guineas  a  week  for 
editing  The  Gazetteer,  succeeded  in  beating  Wood- 
fall  by  employing  a  staff  of  reporters.  The  Chronicle 
began  to  decline.  Perry,  managing  with  the  help 
of  a  friend  to  scrape  together  about  £1000, 
bought  the  paper  and  made  it  the  accepted  organ 
of  the  Whig  party.  It  soon  became  a  leading 
paper,  and  was  for  a  time  at  the  head  of  the 
London  Press.  It  was  ultimately  sold  after 
Perry's  death,  in  182 1 ,  for  £42,000.  Perry  appears 
to  have  edited  it  himself  until  18^7,  when  his 
mantle  fell  upon  another  vigorous  Scot,  John 
Black,  who  had  joined  it  as  a  reporter.  Black  and 
Barnes  thus  started  simultaneously,  Black  repre- 
senting the  opinions  of  the  "philosophical  Radi- 


64          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

cals, "  and  being  steadily  inspired  by  James  Mill. 
Thus  Perry,  like  Walter,  marks  the  end  of  the 
period  in  which  the  proprietor  still  habitually 
acted  as  editor. 

Perry  at  various  times  received  contributions 
from  many  of  the  most  eminent  writers  of  the 
time.  Coleridge  got  a  guinea  out  of  him  at  a 
critical  moment.  Thomas  Campbell  published 
Ye  Mariners  of  England  in  The  Chronicle;  Charles 
Lamb  sent  him  paragraphs;  Sheridan,  Mack- 
intosh, Hazlitt,  Tom  Moore  were  among  his 
contributors;  and  Lord  Campbell,  better  known 
as  "  the  Chancellor,"  was  for  a  time  both  law  re- 
porter and  theatrical  critic.  The  last  of  the 
three  rulers  of  the  Press,  Daniel  Stuart,  is  still 
often  mentioned  for  a  similar  reason.  Stuart,  like 
Perry,  a  vigorous  Scot,  had  joined  his  brothers, 
who  were  settled  as  printers  in  London.  They 
printed  The  Morning  Post,  which  had  fallen  into 
difficulties;  and  in  1795,  when  its  circulation  was 
only  350  copies  daily,  Daniel  Stuart  bought  the 
paper,  land,  and  plant  for  ^600.  He  raised 
the  circulation  to  4500  in  1803,  when  it  was 
surpassed  in  popularity  by  The  Chronicle  alone. 
He  soon  afterwards  became  the  owner  of  The 
Courier  in  partnership  with  one  Street,  gave  up 
The  Post,  and  in  1822  retired,  having  made  a 
fortune.  Stuart  was  specially  connected  with 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  65 

Mackintosh,  who  married  his  sister  when  they  were 
both  struggling  young  men.  His  fame,  however, 
rests  more  upon  his  connection  with  Coleridge, 
and  he  incurred  the  danger  which  comes  to  all 
publishers  of  works  of  men  of  genius.  Certain 
phrases  in  Coleridge's  Biographia  Literaria  and 
Table  Talk  gave  rise  to  the  impression  that  Stuart 
was  one  of  the  conventional  blood-suckers,  who 
make  their  money  out  of  rising  genius  and  repay 
them  with  the  scantiest  pittance.  Stuart  defended 
himself  effectively;  and  any  doubts  which  might 
remain  have  been  dispersed  by  the  (privately 
printed)  Letters  from  the  Lake  Poets.  Stuart,  in 
fact,  was  one  of  the  most  helpful  of  Coleridge's 
many  friends,  and  Coleridge  to  the  end  of  his 
life  spoke  of  him  and  to  him  with  warm  and 
generous  gratitude.  Coleridge,  it  is  clear  enough, 
and  certainly  very  natural,  took  at  times  an 
exaggerated  view  of  his  services  to  The  Morning 
Chronicle.  His  surprising  statement  that  Stuart, 
in  1800,  offered  him  £2000  a  year  if  he  would 
devote  himself  to  journalism,  that  he  declined  on 
the  ground  that  he  would  not  give  up  "  the  reading 
of  old  folios"  for  twenty  times  ^2000,  and  that  he 
considered  any  pay  beyond  £350  as  a  real  evil,  is 
obviously  impossible.  Stuart  had  probably  tried 
to  spur  his  indolent  contributor  by  saying  that  his 
services  would  be  worth  some  such  sum  if  they 

VOL.   I.— 5 


66  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

could  be  made  regular.  But  the  statement  is 
only  worth  notice  here  in  illustration  of  the 
state  of  the  literary  market  at  the  time.  Southey 
acknowledges  his  gratitude  for  the  guinea  a  week 
which  he  received  as  Stuart's  "  laureate. "  Poetry, 
by  the  way,  appears  to  have  been  more  in  demand 
then  than  at  the  present  day.  Both  Perry  and 
Stuart's  elder  brother  offered  to  employ  Burns; 
and  Coleridge,  Southey,  Campbell,  and  Moore  all 
published  poems  in  the  newspapers.  Lamb  tried 
his  hand  at  "  jokes. "  "  Sixpence  a  joke, "  he  says, 
"and  it  was  thought  pretty  high,  too,  was  Dan 
Stuart's  settled  remuneration  in  these  cases" 
(Newspapers  Thirty -five  Years  Ago),  and  no  para- 
graph was  to  exceed  seven  lines.  In  a  letter  of 
1803,  Lamb  says  that  he  has  given  up  his  "two 
guineas  a  week"  from  The  Post.  The  high-water 
mark  of  a  journalist's  earnings  at  the  end  of  the 
last  century  is  probably  marked  by  the  achieve- 
ment of  Mackintosh,  who  earned  ten  guineas  in  a 
week.  "No  paper  could  stand  it!"  exclaimed 
the  proprietor,  and  the  bargain  had  to  be  revised. 
A  few  years  later,  however,  we  are  told  that 
Sterling,  the  father  of  Carlyle's  friend,  was  receiv- 
ing the  sum  which  Coleridge  supposed  himself 
to  have  refused,  namely,  £2000  a  year  for  writing 
leading  articles  in  The  Times.  Stuart,  it  would 
seem,  in  the  earlier  period  was  paying  the  fair 


The  Evolution  of  Editors  67 

value  of  their  wares  to  Coleridge,  Southey, 
and  their  like;  but  in  the  days  of  Scott  and 
Byron  the  price  of  popular  writing  was  going 
up  by  leaps  and  bounds. 

The  normal  process  of  the  evolution  of  editors 
was  what  I  have  tried  to  sketch,  simply,  that  is, 
the  gradual  delegation  of  powers  by  the  printer  or 
bookseller  who  had  first  employed  some  inhabi- 
tant of  Grub  Street  as  a  drudge,  and  when  the 
work  became  too  complex  and  delicate,  had 
handed  over  the  duties  to  men  of  special  literary 
training.  Two  very  important  periodicals,  how- 
ever of  this  period  show  a  certain  reversion  to  the 
older  type.  The  Edinburgh  Review  owed  part  of 
its  success  to  its  independence  of  publishers.  It 
was  started,  not  by  a  speculator  who  might  wish 
to  puff  his  own  wares,  but  by  a  little  knot  of 
audacious  youths,  who  combined  as  Steele  and 
Addison  combined  in  The  Spectator.  It  seems  that 
at  first  they  scarcely  even  contemplated  the 
necessity  of  an  editor,  and  Sydney  Smith  was  less 
editor  than  president  of  the  little  committee  of 
authors  at  the  start.  When  Jeffrey  took  up  the 
duty,  he  was  careful  to  make  it  understood  that 
his  work  was  to  be  strictly  subordinate  to  his 
professional  labours,  and  had  no  inkling  that  his 
fame  would  come  to  depend  upon  his  editorship. 
The  Edinburgh,  however,  soon  became  a  review 


68  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

of  the  normal  kind.  Cobbett,  on  the  other  hand 
started  his  Political  Register  as  a  kind  of  rival  to 
The  Annual  Register.  It  was  to  be  mainly  a 
collection  of  State  papers  and  official  documents; 
but  it  soon  changed  in  his  hands  into  the  likeness 
of  De  Foe's  old  Review.  It  became  a  personal  man- 
ifesto of  Cobbett  himself,  and,  as  such,  held  a  most 
important  place  in  the  journalism  of  the  time. 
But  Cobbett  was,  and  in  some  ways  remains 
unique,  and,  as  the  newspaper  has  developed,  the 
" we "  has  superseded  the  "I,"  and  the  organism 
become  too  complex  to  represent  any  single  person. 
The  history,  indeed,  would  help  to  explain  various 
peculiarities  characteristic  of  English  newspapers, 
especially  the  bad  odour  which  long  adhered  to  the 
profession,  and  made  even  Warrington  ashamed  to 
confess  to  Pendennis  that  he  was  a  contributor  to 
a  leading  newspaper.  The  author  by  profession 
of  the  time  of  Ralph  had  excellent  reasons  for 
concealing  his  name,  and  the  desire  for  anonymity 
long  survived  the  old  justification.  But  I  have 
said  enough  to  leave  that  and  other  considerations 
untouched  for  the  present. 


John  Byrom 

"1X7"  HO  was  John  Byrom?  That  is  a  question  to 
»  •  which,  if  it  were  set  in  an  examination  for 
students  of  English  literature,  an  answer  might  rea- 
sonably be  expected,  but  which,  if  put  to  less  om- 
niscient persons,  might  not  improbably  receive  a 
rather  vague  reply.  And  yet  an  answer  might  be 
given  which  would  awake  some  familiar  associa- 
tions. John  Byrom  was  the  author  of  two  or  three 
epigrams  wrhich  for  some  reason  have  retained 
their  vitality  well  into  a  second  century  of  exist- 
ence. The  unmusical  are  still  happy  to  recall 
the  comparison  between  Handel  and  Buononcini, 
and  to  wonder  that  there  should  be  such  a  differ- 
ence between  "  tweedle-dum  and  tweedle-dee," 
though  they  are  apt  to  assign  to  Swift  instead  of 
Byrom  the  credit  of  being  the  first  worm  to  turn 
against  the  contempt  of  more  happily  endowed 
natures.  There  is  the  still  more  familiar  verse, 
ending : 

But  who  Pretender  is,  and  who  is  King, 
God  bless  us  all,  that  's  quite  another  thing. 

And  there  is  a  certain  rhyme  about  "Bone  and 

Skin,  two  millers  thin,"  which — though  the  real 

69 


70  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

names  of  the  millers  and  the  circumstances  which 
induced  the  declaration  that  flesh  and  blood  could 
not  bear  them  have  long  vanished  out  of  all  but 
antiquarian  memories — has  somehow  continued 
to  go  on  jingling  in  men's  ears  ever  since  i7th 
December,  1728.  I  have  said  enough  to  suggest 
more  than  one  problem.  What  is  the  salt  which 
has  kept  these  fragments  of  rhyme  so  long  alive? 
Is  it  due  to  the  sound  or  the  sense?  Survival  for 
a  century  has  been  given  as  the  test  which  entitles 
a  man  to  be  called  a  classic.  Does  the  survival  of 
these  little  impromptus  entitle  Byrom  to  be  a 
classic?  May  we  call  them  jewels  five  lines  long, 
that  are  to  sparkle  for  ever  on  the  stretched  fore- 
finger of  all  time?  That  seems  to  be  too  lofty  a 
claim.  The  thought  is  not  by  itself  very  subtle 
or  very  keen.  And  yet  when  we  think  how  few 
are  the  writers  who  can  blow  even  the  frailest  of 
word-bubbles  which  shall  go  floating  down  five 
or  six  generations,  we  must  admit  the  fact  to  be 
remarkable.  What  is  the  quality  which  it  indi- 
cates in  the  author?  And  here  I  might  affect  to 
take  up  the  psychological  method ;  show  what  are 
the  peculiarities  necessarily  implied  by  success  in 
these  little  achievements ;  deduce  from  them  what 
must  have  been  the  characteristics  of  Byrom's 
mind  and  temperament ;  and  finally,  by  appealing 
to  facts,  show  how  strikingly  the  a  priori  reason- 


John  Byrom  71 

ing  would  be  confirmed  by  experience.  I  think 
that  a  little  ingenuity  might  enable  an  ambitious 
critic  to  give  plausibility  to  such  a  procedure ;  but 
I  prefer  to  take  a  humbler  method,  for  which 
sufficient  materials  have  been  lately  provided. 
Byrom,  I  may  remark,  in  the  first  place,  is  hardly 
thought,  even  by  his  warm  admirers,  to  be  other 
than  a  second-rate  poet ;  nor  need  I  appeal  to  the 
Latin  grammar  to  prove  that  second-rate  poetry 
is  not  generally  worth  reading.  The  reason  is,  I 
suppose,  that  a  second-rate  poet  only  does  badly 
what  has  been  done  well,  whereas  even  a  tenth-rate 
historian  or  philosopher  may  be  giving  something 
new.  That  reason,  at  least,  will  do  sufficiently 
well  to  suggest  why  an  exception  may  be  made 
in  favour  of  some  second-rate  poetry.  There  are 
cases  in  which  poetry  not  of  the  highest  class 
reveals  a  charm  of  character  peculiar  to  itself, 
though  not  of  the  highest  kind.  We  cannot 
help  loving  the  writer,  though  we  admit  that  he 
was  not  a  Dante,  or  a  Shakespeare,  nor  even — in 
this  case  the  comparison  is  more  to  the  purpose — 
a  Pope.  The  first  condition  of  this  kind  of 
charm  is,  of  course,  perfect  simplicity.  The  poet 
must  be  really  showing  us  his  heart,  not  getting 
upon  stilts  and  trying  to  pour  out  epic  poems 
and  Pindaric  odes,  after  the  fashion  of  some  of 
Byrom's  contemporaries.  Glover's  Leonidas  and 


72  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Mason's  odes  have  long  been  swept  into  the  limbo 
where  such  things  go;  but  the  excellent  Byrom, 
who  is  content  to  be  himself,  and  whose  self 
happened  to  be  a  very  attractive  one,  may 
be  still  read  with  pleasure.  Indeed,  and  this 
is  what  prompts  me  to  speak  of  him  just  now, 
he  has  found  an  editor  who  reads  him  with  en- 
thusiasm as  well  as  pleacure.  Four  handsome 
volumes1  have  recently  been  published  by  the 
Chetham  Society  under  the  care  of  Dr.  Ward, 
Principal  of  the  Owens  College.  Dr.  Ward  has 
done  his  work  in  the  most  loving  spirit;  he  has 
pointed  out  with  affectionate  solicitude  everything 
that  strikes  him  as  admirable  in  Byrom's  poetry ; 
he  has  not  been  so  blinded  by  zeal  as  to  try  to 
force  upon  us  admiration  for  the  weaker  pieces 
at  the  point  of  the  critical  bayonet;  and  he  has 
given  with  overflowing  learning  everything  that  a 
reader  can  possibly  require  for  the  due  apprecia- 
tion of  incidental  circumstances.  I  fear  that  I 
am  not  quite  a  worthy  follower ;  my  admiration  of 
Byrom's  poetry  stops  a  little  further  this  side  of 
idolatry;  and,  therefore,  I  frankly  admit  that  Dr. 
Ward  is  likely  to  be  a  better  guide  than  I  to 
those  who  are  accessible  to  Byrom's  charm.  In 
such  cases  excess  of  zeal  is  far  less  blamable  than 
defect.  Still,  I  hope  that  in  a  liking  for  Byrom 
s.  each  in  two  parts,  properly. 


John  Byrom  73 

himself  I  am  not  altogether  unworthy  to  follow 
in  his.  admirer's  steps ;  and  it  is  of  the  man  him- 
self that  I  propose  chiefly  to  speak.  Byrom,  as 
I  think,  is  a  very  attractive  example  of  a  charm- 
ing type  of  humanity ;  and  shows  qualities  really 
characteristic  of  the  period,  though  too  often  over- 
looked in  our  popular  summaries.  He  flourished 
during  the  literary  reigns  of  Addison  and  Pope; 
and  the  splendour  of  their  fame  is  too  often 
allowed  to  blind  us  to  the  peculiarities  of  some  of 
the  secondary  luminaries. 

Byrom  has  already  been  made  known  to  us  by 
his  "  remains,"  published  for  the  Chetham  Society 
some  forty  years  ago.  Of  this,  Dr.  Ward  says 
that,  were  it  more  widely  known,  it  would  be  "one 
of  the  most  popular  works  of  English  biographical 
literature."  It  is,  I  think,  only  fair  to  warn 
any  one  who  is  tempted  to  rush  at  once  to  a 
library  to  procure  this  fascinating  work,  that  it 
will  not  yield  up  its  charm — a  charm  there  cer- 
tainly is — without  a  certain  amount  of  persever- 
ance. A  good  deal  of  it  is  a  skeleton  diary — 
mere  statements  of  small  facts,  which,  if  interest- 
ing at  all,  are  interesting  only  when  you  have 
enabled  yourself  to  read  a  good  deal  between  the 
actually  written  lines — and,  moreover,  Byrom  is 
apt  to  be  tantalising,  and  to  confine  himself  to 
brief  notes  just  where  we  should  be  glad  of 


74  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

a  little  more  expansion.  He  meets  Laurence 
Sterne,  for  example,  and  repeats  not  a  word  of 
his  talk.  After  making  this  reservation,  I  can 
fully  agree  with  Dr.  Ward,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  read  through  the  book  without  deriving  a 
charming  impression  of  Byrom  himself,  and  of 
the  circle  in  which  he  especially  delighted. 

And  now  I  will  try  to  answer  briefly  the  ques- 
tion from  which  I  started.  Who  was  Byrom? 
Byrom  was  the  descendant  of  an  old  family  long 
settled  near  Manchester.  The  Byroms  of  Byrom 
had  dwindled  down  till  they  were  represented 
by  one  Beau  Byrom,  who,  in  the  time  of  his 
cousin,  was  consuming  the  last  fragments  of  the 
ancestral  estates,  was  subsiding  into  a  debtor's 
prison,  and  was  not  above  accepting  a  half-crown 
from  his  more  prosperous  relative.  The  Byroms 
of  Manchester  were  meanwhile  prospering  in 
business.  Manchester  was  then  a  country  town 
of  some  30,000  inhabitants,  beginning  to  take  a 
certain  interest  in  a  Bill  permitting  a  freer  use 
of  cotton ;  but  not,  as  yet,  feeling  itself  aggrieved 
by  exclusion  from  a  Parliamentary  representation. 
The  upper  classes  had  a  strong  tincture  of  the 
Jacobitism  prevalent  in  the  Lancashire  of  those 
days ;  and  John,  born  in  1692,  was  clearly  brought 
up  in  this  faith.  He  was  sent  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  then  under  the  rule  of  the  great 


John  Byrom  75 

Bentley,  who  was  at  the  time  beginning  the  famous 
legal  warfare  which  was  to  display  his  boundless 
pugnacity  and  fertility  of  resource  in  litigation. 
Nobody  was  less  inclined  to  sympathise  with 
excessive  quarrelsomeness  than  Byrom;  but  the 
young  man,  who  became  scholar  and  fellow 
of  his  college,  was  always  on  most  friendly  terms 
with  the  master.  Bentley  could  be  good  com- 
pany when  his  antipathies  were  not  aroused, 
and  Byrom  was  welcomed  to  the  great  man's 
domestic  circle.  Incidentally  this  led  to  the  per- 
formance which  made  him  in  a  modest  way 
famous  for  years  to  come.  The  Spectator  had 
been  revived  in  1714,  when  Byrom  was  about 
to  gain  his  fellowship.  The  young  man  sent  to 
it  a  couple  of  papers  which  were  published  in  the 
famous  journal — a  success  sufficient  to  give  him 
a  kind  of  patent  of  authorship.  He  followed  it 
up  by  the  more  successful "  pastoral,"  addressed  to 
Phebe.  Phebe  was  Joanna  or  "  Jug  "  Bentley,  the 
master's  youngest  daughter.  She  was  destined  to 
be  the  mother  of  the  Cumberland  described  by 
Goldsmith  as  "The  Terence  of  England,  the 
mender  of  hearts,"  but  perhaps  better  known  as 
Sheridan 's  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary.  She  was,  as  her 
son  intimates,  a  witty  young  lady,  sometimes  coy 
and  silent,  and  sometimes  a  little  too  smart  in  her 
satire.  More  than  one  of  the  college  fellows 


76  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

were  fascinated  by  her  in  later  days,  and  even 
brought  to  take  her  father's  side  in  his  disputes. 
One  of  the  superseded  laments1  her 

haughtiness  of  mien, 
And  all  the  father  in  the  daughter  seen. 

At  this  period,  though  she  was  only  eleven,  she 
probably  showed  symptoms  enough  of  these 
characteristics  to  suggest  the  tone  of  Byrom's 
famous  verses.  Famous  they  certainly  were  in  his 
day,  for  his  friends  constantly  asked  him  for  copies ; 
but  perhaps  they  are  not  so  famous  now  as  to 
forbid  a  specimen.  Colin  is  terribly  put  out  by 
Phebe's  absence. 

My  dog  I  was  ever  well  pleased  to  see 
Come  wagging  his  tail  to  my  fair  one  and  me: 
And  Phebe  was  pleased  too.  and  to  my  dog  said, 
"  Come  hither,  poor  fellow,"  and  patted  his  head. 
But  now,  when  he  's  fawning,  I  with  a  sour  look 
Cry  "  Sirrah,"  and  give  him  a  blow  with  my  crook; 
And  I  '11  give  him  another;  for  why  should  not  Tray 
Be  as  dull  as  his  master  when  Phebe's  away? 

"  I  '11  give  him  another  "  is  a  phrase  for  which  I 
have  often  been  grateful  to  the  excellent  Byrom. 
It  gives  a  pleasant  sanction  to  one's  own  humours. 
Though  the  metre  limps  a  little  in  this  stanza,  it 
is  often  very  dexterously  used  by  Byrom ;  and  the 
poem  is  worthy  of  a  high  place  in  the  age  of 
'See  his  poem  in  Nichol's  Literary  Anecdotes,  i.,  244. 


John  Byrom  77 

Mat  Prior.  Probably,  though  an  absrub  con- 
struction has  been  put  upon  the  facts,  the  master 
was  not  the  less  friendly  towards  the  young  fellow 
for  this  compliment  to  his  bright  little  daughter. 
"  Mr.  Spectator "  judged  rightly  that  it  would 
divert  his  readers;  and  a  Mr.  Mills,  years  after- 
wards, "  kissed  the  book  "  when  he  read  it. 

Byrom  had  some  difficulty  at  the  time  in  taking 
the  oaths  to  the  new  family ;  and  he  made  a  rather 
mysterious  journey  soon  afterwards  to  Montpellier. 
He  professed  to  be  studying  medicine,  and  was 
afterwards  often  called ' ' doctor. ' '  It  was,  however, 
strongly  suspected  that  his  journey  had  a  political 
purpose.  He  certainly  kissed  the  Pretender's 
hand  at  Avignon.  He  returned  after  a  time  to 
Manchester,  where,  in  1721,  he  married  his  cousin, 
Elizabeth  Byrom.  His  father  was  dead ;  and  the 
family  property  had  gone  to  his  elder  brother. 
Byrom  was  therefore  in  want  of  money,  and  the 
measure  which  he  took  for  obtaining  supplies  was 
characteristic,  and  led  him  into  a  peculiar  career. 
Byrom  would  not  have  been  the  man  he  was  with- 
out a  hobby.  In  fact,  he  so  far  shared  the  spirit 
of  the  Shandy  family  that  he  had  a  whole  stable  of 
hobbies.  He  belongs  on  one  side  to  the  species 
which  had  been  celebrated  by  so  many  of  the 
eighteenth-century  humourists.  He  would  have 
appreciated  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  or  Parson 


78  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Adams,  or  Uncle  Toby,  or  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 
The  kindly  simplicity  which  takes  a  different 
colouring  in  each  of  those  friends  of  our  ima- 
gination was  fully  realised  in  Byrom.  He  was 
evidently  overflowing  with  the  milk  of  human 
kindness;  attaching  himself  to  every  variety  of 
person,  from  the  great  Bentley  to  the  burlesque 
Sam  Johnson,  author  of  Hurlothrunibo ;  appreciat- 
ing them  as  cordially  as  Boswell,  and  alienated  by 
nothing  but  censorious  harshness.  But,  through 
all,  he  has  a  quaint  turn  of  mind  which  shows 
alternately  the  two  aspects  of  genuine  humour — a 
perception  of  the  absurd  side  of  other  people's 
crotchets,  or  an  addiction  to  some  pet  crotchet 
of  his  own.  Now  the  great  discovery  upon  which 
he  prided  himself  was  a  system  of  shorthand.  He 
had  it  seems,  invented  a  system  in  combination 
with  a  friend  at  college;  and  he  now  bethought 
himself  of  turning  this  invention  to  account. 
Shorthand  was  by  no  means  a  novelty ;  and  we  all 
remember  how  Pepys  had  employed  the  invention ; 
but  Byrom's  was,  so  he  believed,  the  very  per- 
fection of  shorthand — "Beauty,  Brevity,  and 
Perspicuity  "  were,  he  says,  its  characteristics.  He 
set  about  propagating  the  true  faith  with  infinite 
zeal.  In  London  he  found  a  rival,  one  Weston, 
who  was  making  a  living  by  giving  lessons  in  the 
art.  Weston  challenged  him  to  display  his  skill,. 


John  Byrom  79 

and  put  bragging  advertisements  in  the  papers  to 
claim  superiority.  Byrom  felt  that  his  dignity 
might  be  compromised  by  a  contest  with  a 
commonplace  teacher.  His  own  shorthand  was 
founded  on  scientific  principles,  and  was  a  mystery 
to  be  imparted  to  the  nobility  and  gentry ;  whereas 
Weston  was  a  mere  empiric,  and,  moreover,  a 
vulgar  person  who  talked  broad  Scotch.  Byrom, 
therefore,  retorted  only  by  some  humorous 
remarks,  and  apparently  made  peace  with  his 
humble  rival.  He  served  as  umpire  at  a  contest 
between  Weston  and  another  pretender  to  the 
art,  and  laid  down  the  law  with  the  lofty  superi- 
ority of  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society.  When  in- 
vited to  take  notes  at  a  famous  law-case  in  those 
days  he  doubts  his  own  ability  and  even  recom- 
mends a  trial  of  Weston.  His  own  shorthand 
was  too  good,  he  seems  to  imply,  to  be  exposed 
to  the  vulgar  test  of  mere  speed  of  writing.  Ex- 
perts, in  fact,  say  that  its  defects  in  this  respect  led 
to  its  being  superseded  in  the  next  generation. 
Meanwhile,  however,  Byrom  not  only  believed  him- 
self, but  collected  a  body  of  believers.  They 
formed  a  shorthand  society;  they  had  periodical 
meetings,  and  addressed  each  other  as  "brothers  in 
shorthand. "  Byrom  was  greeted  as  Grand  Master, 
and  pronounced  a  solemn  oration  at  their  first 
gathering.  Its  preparation  during  two  or  three 


8o  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

previous  weeks  is  noted  in  his  journal.  He  takes 
the  highest  possible  tone.  He  humorously  traces 
back  his  art  to  the  remotest  antiquity;  he  inti- 
mates that  Plato  probably  used  shorthand  to  take 
down  the  conversation  of  Socrates,  and  finds 
shorthand  even  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics.  The 
divine  Tully,  however,  is  his  great  model,  and  he 
shows  by  an  ingenious  emendation  (notare  for 
natare)  that  the  Emperor  Augustus  taught  his 
nephews,  not  to  swim,  but  to  take  notes.  He 
points  out  that  amidst  all  the  vices  of  Caligula,  one 
which  was  thought  to  deserve  notice  was  his  ig- 
norance of  shorthand.  Making  a  rapid  bound 
over  the  intervening  period,  with  one  brief  touch 
at  the  Abbot  Trithemius,  he  appeals  to  the  patri- 
otism of  his  hearers  to  support  what  was  at  this 
time  held  to  be  a  specially  English  art.  A  formal 
paper  is  drawn  up,  beginning,  Quod  felix  faustum- 
que  sit,  and  declaring  that  the  signers  will  form 
society,  ad  tachygraphiam  nostram  ediscendam,  pro- 
movendam,  et  perpetuandam,  in  secula  secular  um, 
Amen. 

The  meetings  of  the  shorthanders  naturally  took 
place  at  taverns,  and  they  formed  a  kind  of  club 
after  the  fashion  of  the  day.  Byrom  took  five 
guineas  from  each  aspirant  to  the  art,  and  a 
promise  not  to  divulge  the  secret.  They  had 
apparently  very  pleasant  meetings,  and  diverged 


John  Byrom  81 

from  shorthand  into  discussions  of  politics, 
theology,  freewill,  and  things  in  general.  On  one 
occasion,  for  example,  when  Byrom  observes  that 
he  was  in  "  a  talking  humour, "  which  was  certainly 
not  rare,  he  discusses  the  Babylonian  and  Coptic 
letters,  the  probabilities  of  the  devil  being  saved, 
and  "Dr.  Dens'  drawer  of  daggers."  Unluckily, 
the  remarks  which  threw  light  upon  these  topics 
are  not  reported.  The  society  seems  to  have  done 
its  duty  in  loyally  spreading  its  president's  fame. 
Great  men  became  his  pupils.  The  most  famous 
in  early  years  was  Lord  Chesterfield;  Horace 
Walpole  afterwards  took  some  lessons.  His 
warmest  friend  was  the  amiable  philosopher, 
David  Hartley,  who  cordially  supported  him 
in  efforts  to  raise  a  subscription  for  a  publica- 
tion of  his  method  once  for  all.  Although  this 
came  to  nothing,  Byrom,  in  1742,  obtained 
an  Act  of  Parliament  which  gave  him  the  right 
of  publishing  and  teaching  for  twenty-one 
years. 

It  was  while  he  was  engaged  upon  this  pro- 
paganda that  most  of  the  diary  was  written. 
Manchester,  of  course,  did  not  afford  aspirants 
enough  to  maintain  a  teacher.  Byrom  had, 
therefore,  to  leave  his  family  and  pass  months 
together  in  London  and  at  Cambridge,  where  he 
had  kept  up  many  friendships.  Travelling,  of 

VOL.   I.— 6. 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 


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John  Byrom  83 

Nay,  should  one  reflect  upon  cruelty's  come, 
In  the  gentlemen  botchers,  the  Hunt,  and  the  Course, 
'T  were  enough  to  prevent  either  pudding  or  jefly 
Prom  storing  such  carcass  within  a  man's  belly! 

Here  and  there  he  has  an  adventure.  He  has  a 
gift  for  falling  in  with  the  most  deserving  beggars, 
poor  soldiers  who  have  been  "in  slavery"  some- 
where, and  the  Eke,  and  gives  them  money  and 
letters  to  his  friends.  Once,  in  Epping  Forest,  on 
the  way  to  Cambridge,  he  has  the  proper  meeting 
with  a  highwayman.  Of  course,  he  takes  it  good- 
humouredly ,  as  an  excellent  ptelext  for  a  copy  of 
verses.  The  highwayman's  bad  language  runs 
spontaneously  into  rhyme;  and  in  proper  epical 
style  the  ruffian  is  put  to  flight  by  the  mock-heroic 
vision  of  the  "Goddess  Shorthand,  bright,  celestial 
maid"!  In  sober  prose,  the  highwayman  goes  off 
with  a  guinea  of  Byrom's,  and  Byrom  expects  to 
see  him  again  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Tyburn. 
Byrom,  however,  is  really  happy  when  he  is  in  the 
fuH  stream  of  society.  One  of  his  friends  describes 
a  typical  London  day  from  imagination,  which, 
as  the  diary  shows,  is  very  nearly  correct.  He 
generally  gets  up  late,  we  are  sorry  to  observe, 
but  he  has  often  been  sitting  up  at  a  crab,  or  some- 
times, studying  Hebrew  tin  two  or  three  in  the 
morning.  He  has  a  meagre  dish  of  tea,  reads  the 
equally  meagre  papers,  and  groans  over  his  absence 


84          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

from  Mrs.  Byrom  and  his  family.  Then  he  turns 
out  to  give  a  lesson  in  shorthand.  He  is  tempted 
to  "  a  hedge-bookseller's  in  some  bye-lane. "  He  is 
in  the  habit  of  denouncing  the  love  of  book-buying 
as  a  vanity,  but  he  cannot  resist  it.  He  buys  some 
queer  old  volume — mystical  divinity  if  possible — 
and,  to  do  him  justice,  seldom  gets  to  a  pound  and 
often  descends  to  fourpence.  Afterwards  he  drops 
in  upon  friendly  Dr.  Hartley  and  his  charming 
wife,  and  discusses  the  chances  of  a  subscription 
for  his  book.  He  fills  up  time  by  an  interview 
with  a  member  of  some  eccentric  sect;  and, 
finally,  meets  a  knot  of  friends  at  a  tavern. 
Byrom,  of  course,  was  strictly  temperate,  though 
he  seems  to  have  tried  his  digestion  by  some 
rather  odd  mixtures  (such  as  cream  and  ale) ,  and 
equally  of  course,  he  is,  though  not  quite  system- 
atically, a  vegetarian.  He  would  have  been  an 
anti-vaccinationist,  and  already  denounces  inocu- 
lation. His  friends  dearly  like  to  pay  him  little 
compliments  by  asking  for  a  copy  of  "  My  time,  O 
ye  Muses,"  or  his  epigram  on  Handel  and  Buonon- 
cini.  Now  and  then  he  extemporises  a  copy  of 
verses  on  the  appearance  of  the  president  of  a 
club,  for  example,  in  "  a  black  bob- wig. "  What 
can  be  the  cause? 

A  phrenzy  ?  or  a  periwigmanee 
That  overruns  his  pericranie  ? 


John  Byrom  85 

That  he  could  enjoy  some  amusements  which 
seem  scarcely  in  character  is  proved  by  the  verses 
on  Figg  and  Sutton,  done  into  prose  in  Thack- 
eray's Virginians,  and  Dr.  Ward  has  to  remind  us 
that  this  was  "not  a  brutal  prize-fight,"  but  an 
ultra-vigorous  ' '  assault-at-arms. ' '  The  line  seems 
rather  hard  to  draw.  Byrom  at  least  sympa- 
thises with  the  familiar  sentiment  about  the 
"British  Grenadier." 

Were  Hector  himself,  with  Apollo  to  back  him, 
To  encounter  with   Sutton, — zooks!   how  he  would 

thwack  him! 

Or  Achilles,  though  old  Mother  Thetis  had  dipt  him, 
With  Figg — odds  my  life!  how  he  would  have  unript 

him! 

Another  of  Byrom's  characteristic  performances 
was  prompted  by  his  interest  in  his  fellow  towns- 
man, Samuel  Johnson,  a  fiddler  and  dancing- 
master,  wrho  produced  a  strange  medley  called 
Hurlothrumbo.  Dr.  Ward,  who  has  read  it,  as  in 
duty  bound,  says  that  it  is  sheer  burlesque,  though 
some  critics  seem  to  be  haunted  by  an  uncomfort- 
able suspicion  that  its  apparent  madness  conceals 
some  sparks  of  genius.  Anyhow,  Byrom  took  it 
as  farce,  and,  partly  for  the  fun  of  the  thing,  and 
partly  from  a  good-natured  wish  to  be  of  use  to 
the  author,  contributed  an  amusing  epilogue  and 
attended  the  first  performance  in  London.  There 


86  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

were  seven  or  eight  "garters"  in  the  pit;  Byrom 
led  the  claque.  The  audience  took  the  joke.  The 
play  ran  for  thirty  nights;  the  name  got  a  place 
in  popular  slang,  and  Johnson  appears  to  have 
been  grateful,  whether  he  quite  perceived  or  not 
that  Byrom  was  laughing  in  his  sleeve.  "  For  my 
part, "  says  Byrom  to  his  wife, "  who  think  all  stage 
entertainments  stuff  and  nonsense,  I  consider  this 
as  a  joke  upon  'em  all." 

This,  indeed,  marks  Byrom's  peculiar  vein. 
Hitherto  I  have  spoken  of  him  as  an  admirably 
good-natured  humourist  and  lover  of  harmless  fun. 
He  can  go  to  a  tavern  or  Figg's  "amphitheatre," 
and,  to  all  appearance,  throw  himself  into  the 
spirit  of  the  performances  as  heartily  as  any  of  his 
companions.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  he  was  a 
man  of  very  deep  and  peculiar  religious  sentiments. 
In  this  matter  of  the  play,  he  gradually  came,  it 
seems,  to  take  a  stricter  view.  The  denunciation 
of  the  stage  by  the  non-juror  Jeremy  Collier  had 
become  famous.  Arthur  Bedford,  an  orthodox 
clergyman,  had  (in  1719)  collected  7000  "immoral 
sentiments  from  British  dramatists"  to  prove  the 
same  point,  and  William  Law,  Byrom's  great 
teacher,  had  demonstrated  in  a  treatise  the  abso- 
lute unlawfulness  of  stage  entertainments  (1726), 
and  had  elsewhere  declared  that  "the  playhouse 
was  as  certainly  the  house  of  the  devil  as  the 


John  Byrom  87 

church  was  the  house  of  God."  Byrom  was, 
perhaps,  one  of  those  people  who  could  not  be  too 
hard  even  upon  the  "puir  de  fil."  He  was,  at 
least,  willing  to  try  the  effect  of  good-humoured 
raillery  on  the  evil  one  before  proceeding  to 
stronger  measures.  When  one  of  his  friends 
complains  of  Law's  severity  in  this  matter,  Byrom 
is  evidently  puzzled.  His  reverence  for  Law 
struggles  with  a  sense  that  the  oracle  was  rather 
harsh.  But  in  other  matters  Byrom's  loyalty  was 
boundless.  Byrom's  interest  in  various  representa- 
tives of  the  religious  speculations  of  the  time 
is  shown  constantly  in  his  diaries.  He  meets 
William  Whiston,  the  successor  to  Newton's 
professorship,  who  had  been  deprived  of  his  place 
as  a  heretic,  and  went  about  in  all  societies  (he 
appears  in  the  well-known  picture  of  Tunbridge 
Wells  with  Richardson,  Chesterfield,  and  the  rest) 
trying  to  propagate  what  he  took  to  be  primitive 
Christianity.  Dr.  Primrose,  as  we  know,  was 
unlucky  enough  to  be  converted  to  his  doctrine 
of  monogamy.  In  simplicity  and  honesty  he  was 
worthy  to  make  friends  with  Byrom;  but,  to  say 
the  truth,  he  appears  in  the  diary  rather  in  the 
character  of  a  conceited  bore.  He  had  not 
Byrom's  saving  sense  of  humour.  Then  there 
was  Edward  Elwall,  who  was  tried  for  blasphemy 
because  he  taught  the  "perpetual  obligation"  of 


88  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  Jewish  law,  and  consequently  wore  a  beard  and 
a  Turkish  habit  (the  "  habit"  out  of  respect,  we  are 
told,  for  the  Mohammedans),  and  shut  his  shop 
on  Saturdays.  King  George,  he  said,  according 
to  Dr.  Johnson,  if  he  were  afraid  to  dispute  with 
a  poor  old  man,  might  bring  a  thousand  of  his 
blackguards  with  him;  and,  if  that  would  not  do, 
a  thousand  of  his  red  guards.  He  seems,  how- 
ever, to  have  got  out  of  his  troubles,  and  was  duly 
interviewed  by  Byrom.  Byrom  met  more  re- 
markable personages.  He  knew  something  of 
the  Wesleys  and  he  had  one  of  the  few  recorded 
interviews  with  Bishop  Butler.  They  had  a  long 
discussion  as  to  the  claims  of  reason  and  authority. 
The  bishop,  one  may  guess,  got  rather  the  best 
of  it,  as  Byrom  admits  that  he  was  himself  too 
warm,  while  the  bishop  was  conspicuously  mild 
and  candid.  Unluckily,  Byrom  was  an  inadequate 
Boswell,  and  is  so  anxious  to  record  his  own 
argument  on  behalf  of  authority  that  he  does 
not  quite  let  us  know  what  Butler  had  to  say 
for  reason.  Law,  however,  is  by  far  the  most 
conspicuous  figure.  Law,  when  Byrom  first 
went  to  see  him  (4th  March,  1729),  was  living 
in  the  house  of  old  Mr.  Gibbon  at  Putney,  and 
acting  as  tutor  to  the  younger  Gibbon,  afterwards 
father  of  the  historian.  He  had  been  at  Cam- 
bridge in  Byrom's  time,  had  got  into  difficulties 


John  Byrom  89 

for  his  Jacobite  proclivities,  and,  by  refusing  to 
take  the  oaths,  had  cut  himself  off  from  an  active 
clerical  career.  Byrom  would  sympathise  with 
him  upon  this  ground;  but  it  was  the  recently 
published  Serious  Call  which  led  to  the  new 
connection.  Byrom  bought  the  book  in  February, 
1729,  and  at  once  felt  the  influence,  which  made 
its  perusal  a  turning-point  in  the  lives  of  many 
eminent  men  of  the  day.  To  him  it  was  especially 
congenial.  Law  afterwards  became  a  disciple 
of  Jacob  Bohme,  and  Byrom,  though  he  accepted 
the  later  utterances  with  reverence,  confessed 
that  they  were  above  his  comprehension.  Of 
such  matters,  I  may  say  that  at  a  later  period 
Law  might  probably  have  been,  like  Coleridge, 
a  follower  of  Schelling  and  have  clothed  his 
thought  in  the  language  of  transcendental  meta- 
physics rather  than  of  the  old  theosophy.  He 
was  no  mere  dreamer  or  word-maker.  If  to  his 
contemporaries  he  seemed  to  be  talking  mere 
jargon,  later  critics  have  thought  that  his  posi- 
tion showed  a  real  insight  into  the  intellectual 
deficiencies  of  the  time.  But,  in  any  case,  he 
was,  as  Gibbon  declares,  "a  wit  and  a  scholar"; 
had  not  his  mind  been  "  clouded  with  enthusiasm, " 
he  would  have  been  one  of  the  most  agreeable 
authors  of  the  day ;  and  his  portraits  in  the  Serious 
are  "  not  unworthy  of  the  pen  of  La  Bruyere, " 


90  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

These  compliments  from  Gibbon  are  significant. 
Neither  Law  nor  Byrom  was  a  contemporary 
of  Addison  and  Pope  for  nothing.  However 
far  they  were  from  the  ordinary  tone  of  religion 
and  philosophy,  they  could  both  mix  in  the 
society  of  the  day,  and  write  as  brightly  and 
observe  as  keenly  as  the  ordinary  frequenter  of 
clubs  and  coffee-houses.  Their  mysticism  was 
not  mere  muddle.  They  show  that  a  man  may 
have  the  sparkle  and  clearness  of  the  wits  of 
Queen  Anne  allied  with  a  steady  flow  of  sweet 
and  tender  sentiment. 

Byrom  had  already  shown  his  fitness  to  be  a 
disciple  of  Law.  One  of  his  pleasantest  copies  of 
verses  tells  how,  in  1727,  he  bought  a  picture  of 
Malebranche,  a  philosopher  naturally  revered  by 
both.  Byrom  describes  his  eagerness  in  going  to 
the  auction,  his  palpitations  when  the  portrait  of 
the  great  teacher  was  brought  out,  the  haste  with 
which  he  advanced  his  biddings,  and  how  he  gets 
the  picture  for  three  pounds  five  shillings.  His 
ecstasy  is  indescribable!  Let  your  duchesses 
throw  away  ten  times  as  many  guineas  on  pictures 
of  nobodies  by  famous  artists.  Byrom  has  got 
his  Malebranche,  "the  greatest  divine  that  e'er 
lived  upon  earth, "  whips  into  a  coach,  calls  to  the 
driver  to  go  as  fast  as  he  can  spin;  deposits  the 
treasure  at  his  chambers,  and  summons  his  friend 


John  Byrom  91 

to  come  and  rejoice;  let  him  bring  a  friend  or 
two  to  "mix  metaphysics,  and  shorthand,  and 
port. ' '  What,  he  exclaims,  can  "  be  more  clever ' '  ? 
Huzza!  Father  Malebranche,  and  Shorthand  for  ever! 

The  Serious  Call  inspired  another  poem.  When 
Byrom,  a  few  days  after  reading  it,  made  his  first 
call  upon  the  author,  he  had  in  his  pocket  a  versi- 
fication of  a  quaint  parable  which  it  contains. 
Law  compares  the  man  whose  heart  is  set  upon 
the  world  to  a  person  with  a  monomania  about  a 
pond.  He  passes  his  life  in  trying  to  keep  the 
pond  full,  and  is  finally  drowned  in  it.  This 
struck  Byrom's  fancy.  He  expands  it  into  a  fable 
in  verse,  and  ventures  to  show  his  performance  to 
Law  himself.  Law  laughed,  and  begged  him  not 
to  turn  the  whole  book  into  verse,  "for  then  it 
would  not  sell  in  prose — so  the  good  man  can 
joke."  This  was  before  the  rise  of  the  Authors' 
Society,  and  the  value  of  a  copyright  was  still  a 
subject  for  "joking."  In  later  days,  Law  encour- 
aged Byrom  to  versify  other  works,  and  seems  to 
have  thought  that  the  effect  would  be  to  advertise 
the  prose.  He  calls  Byrom  his  laureate;  but 
Byrom,  I  suspect,  did  not  contribute  much  to 
Law's  popularity.  The  poems  had  not  a  large 
circulation. 

Some  of  his  other  religious  poems  have  great 
merits.  Of  an  early  paraphrase  of  the  23rd  Psalm 


92  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

I  will  only  say  that  Dr.  Ward  endorses  the  state- 
ment of  a  Mr.  Hedges,  that  he  "would  give  all 
the  world  to  have  been  able  to  have  done  them." 
It  is  in  the  same  metre  as  the  pastoral,  and  like 
that  poem  owes  its  charm  to  the  entire  simplicity 
which  enables  Byrom  as  a  reverential  interpreter 
to  catch  the  charm  of  that  masterpiece  of  Hebrew 
poetry.  Another  poem, 

Christians,  awake!  salute  the  happy  morn, 
Whereon  the  Saviour  of  the  world  was  born, 

has  been  often  reprinted,  and  is  given  in  Hymns 
Ancient  and  Modern.  I  may  infer  that  it  is  at 
least  as  familiar  to  my  readers  as  to  myself.  It 
probably  marks  Byrom's  highest  level,  though 
some  other  of  his  religious  poems,  especially 
those  in  which  he  celebrates  his  favourite  virtue, 
contentment,  have  the  same  charm.  They 
breathe,  at  least,  the  sweetness  and  simplicity  of 
the  writer's  own  character.  I  will  quote  one  little 
fragment  as  at  once  brief  and  characteristic : 

O  happy  Resignation! 

That  rises  by  its  fall! 
That  seeks  no  exaltation, 

But  wins  by  losing  all ; 
That  conquers  by  complying, 

Triumphing  in  its  lot ; 
That  lives  when  it  's  a-dying, 

And  is  when  it  is  not! 


John  Byrom  93 

The  longer  pieces,  in  which  Byrom  versified 
Law's  works  with  more  or  less  closeness,  come 
nearer  to  the  conventional  style  of  the  period, 
and  drop  pretty  frequently  into  the  flat  of  mere 
rhymed  prose.  One  of  the  longer,  upon  "  Enthu- 
siasm, "  may  be  mentioned  as  symptomatic  of 
an  often  noticed  transformation  of  meaning.  Our 
ancestors  understood  by  "enthusiasm"  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  fanatical  sects  of  the  Common- 
wealth, or  of  the  "French  Prophets"  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  An  enthusiast  meant  a 
believer  in  a  sham  inspiration.  The  gradual 
change  of  the  word  to  a  complimentary  meaning 
marks  the  familiar  change  which  was  also  shown 
by  the  development  of  sentimentalism  in  litera- 
ture. Byrom,  following  Law  pretty  closely,  takes 
"enthusiasm"  to  mean  devotion  to  some  end,  and 
is  good  or  bad  according  to  the  goodness  or 
badness  of  the  end.  Everybody  must  have  some 
aim.  The  enthusiasm  which  Byron  shared  with 
Law  meant  a  serious  belief  in  Christianity,  and 
the  worldly  only  scoffed  because  they  were  equally 
enthusiastic  about  some  really  inferior  aim.  A 
few  verses  will  show  how  far  Byrom  could  follow 
in  the  steps  of  Pope.  Expanding  a  sentence  of 
Law's,  he  compares  the  classical  enthusiast  with 
the  Christian.  The  mere  scholar  is  grieved  when 
he  sees 


94  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Time,  an  old  Goth,  advancing  to  consume 
Immortal  Gods  and  once  eternal  Rome ; 
When  the  plain  Gospel  spread  its  artless  ray, 
And  rude,  uncultured  Fishermen  had  sway; 
Who  spared  no  Idol,  tho'  divinely  carved, 
Tho'  Art  and  Muse  and  Shrine-engraver  starved; 
Who  saved  poor  wretches  and  destroyed,  alas! 
The  vital  marble  and  the  breathing  brass. 
Where  does  all  Sense  to  him  and  Reason  shine? 
Behold,  in  Tully's  rhetoric  divine! 
"Tully!  "     Enough ;  high  o'er  the  Alps  he  's  gone, 
To  tread  the  ground  that  Tully  trod  upon; 
Haply,  to  find  his  statue  or  his  bust, 
Or  medal  green 'd  with  Ciceronian  rust; 
Perchance,  the  Rostrum — yea,  the  very  wood 
Whereon  this  elevated  genius  stood. 
When  forth  on  Catiline,  as  erst  he  spoke, 
The  thunder  of  "Quousque  tandem"  broke. 

Byrom  is  beginning  to  forget  even  Tully's 
merits  as  a  shorthand  writer.  He  follows  Law 
towards  the  condemnation,  not  only  of  the  stage, 
but  of  classical  scholarship  and  art  in  general. 

It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  Byrom  ever 
got  quite  so  far.  Law  retired  to  his  curious 
hermitage  at  King's  Cliffe,  where  he  could  abandon 
himself  to  pious  meditation  and  the  demoralisation 
of  the  neighbourhood  by  profuse  charity.  Byrom 
was  held  fast  by  his  domestic  ties;  and  took  an 
interest  in  the  local  politics  of  Manchester. 
His  talent  for  versification  gave  him  frequent 
employment.  He  contributed  a  number  of  verses, 


John  Byrom  95 

in  the  nature  of  election  squibs,  to  a  newspaper 
of  the  period,  and  whenever  he  has  an  argument 
with  a  friend,  he  twists  his  logic  into  verse. 
Some  of  the  results  are  quaint  enough.  Tempted, 
apparently,  by  Bentley's  example,  he  had  made 
a  variety  of  conjectural  emendations  of  Horace, 
obviously  rash,  if  not  altogether  absurd.  But 
it  could  have  entered  into  no  less  whimsical  head 
to  put  the  arguments  for  them  into  rhyme.  He 
suggests  unum  for  nonum  in  the  familiar  passage, 

I  take  the  correction,  unumque  prematur, 
"Let  it  lie  for  one  twelvemonth" — Ah,  that  may  hold 
water! 

and  argues  the  point  through  twelve  eight-lined 
stanzas.  Another  "poem"  is  an  antiquarian  dis- 
cussion, showing  that  St.  Gregory  and  not  St. 
George  was  the  patron  saint  of  England;  he 
proves  in  another  that  the  locusts  eaten  by  the 
Baptist  were  fruit,  not  insects;  in  a  third,  that 
the  miracle  at  the  Pentecost  was  worked  upon  the 
hearers,  not  the  speakers. 

"Are  not  these,"  said  the  men,  the  devout  of  each 

land, 

"Galileans  that  speak,  whom  we  all  understand?" 
As  much  as  to  say,  "By  what  wonderful  powers 
Does  the  tongue  Galilean  become  to  us  ours?" 

With  equal  readiness  he  enters  into  an  elaborate 
exegetical  discussion,  defending  Sherlock  against 


96  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Conyers  Middleton;  expounds  the  orthodox  doc- 
trine of  the  fall  of  man  and  justification  by  faith ; 
condemns  Jonathan  Edwards's  arguments  upon 
free-will,  or  versifies  some  prayer  or  letter  that 
has  struck  him  in  reading  memoirs  or  treatises  of 
mystical  divinity.  The  worthy  Byrom,  it  must 
be  added,  did  not  take  his  own  performances  in 
this  line  too  seriously.  They  were  an  amusement 
— a  quaint  whim  characteristic  of  an  oddly 
constituted  brain;  and  one  fancies  that  when  he 
forces  even  Hebrew  and  Greek  into  the  fetters 
of  his  "cantering  rhymes,"  and  twists  dry 
grammatical  discussion  into  comic  metres,  he 
feels  that  the  process  takes  the  bitterness  out 
of  controversy  and  enables  him  to  treat  thorny 
subjects  in  a  vein  of  pleasantry.  It  is  character- 
istic that  he  came  Into  collision  with  the  colossal 
Warburton,  who  had  treated  Law  with  his  usual 
brutality,  and  *that  even  Warburton  found  it 
desirable  for  once  to  be  civil  to  so  amiable  an 
antagonist. 

Byrom's  activity  in  the  shorthand  business 
declined  after  the  death  of  his  brother,  in  1740, 
gave  him  the  family  estates.  In  1745,  he  was 
presented  to  the  Chevalier  in  Manchester;  but 
luckily  did  not  commit  himself  in  any  dangerous 
way  to  answering  his  own  question,  Which  was 
King  and  which  was  Pretender?  Byrom  was 


John  Byrom  97 

very  near  the  Quakers  in  such  matters.  In  a 
poem  on  the  occasion  his  hero,  representing 
Lancashire  in  dialect  and  common-sense,  decides, 
in  spite  of  patriotic  taunts,  to  look  after  his  own 
carcass  and  leave  Highlanders  and  redcoats  to 
fight  it  out.  Byrom  obviously  approves.  No- 
body, as  other  poems  prove,  could  be  less  given 
to  the  worship  of  Jingo.  He  tried  vainly  to  save 
some  young  friends,  less  prudent  than  him- 
self, convicted  of  joining  the  rebels — and,  of 
course,  wrote  his  petition  in  verse.  He  protested, 
too,  in  verse,  and  with  equal  want  of  success, 
against  the  denunciators  of  Admiral  Byng.  He 
died  a  few  years  later  (1763).  He  was  not  buried 
as  the  law  directed,  in  woollen.  His  executors  had 
to  pay  .£5  as  a  fine.  As  Byron  does  not  appear 
to  have  left  any  verses  to  justify  the  failure,  we 
may  perhaps  assume  that  the  omission  was  not  due 
to  any  final  whim  of  his  own.  He  would  hardly 
have  missed  such  a  chance  for  a  poem.  Few 
kindlier  men  have  been  buried  either  in  woollen 
or  linen. 

vol.  I.— 7 


Johnsoniana1 

.  BIRKBECK  HILL  has  completed  his 
labours  upon  Johnson's  life  by  publishing 
this  collection  of  Johnsonian  Miscellanies.  He 
thanks  only  too  warmly  the  person  who  had  the 
good  fortune  to  suggest  this  scheme.  The  sugges- 
tion, it  must  be  said,  needed  very  little  originality. 
WhenCroker  published  his  edition  of  Boswell's  life, 
he  saw  that  it  would  be  desirable  to  gather  the  anec- 
dotes from  other  sources.  With  curious  infelicity, 
he  at  first  thrust  them  into  Boswell's  text ;  but  in 
later  issues  they  appeared  in  a  separate  volume. 
For  that  performance  Croker,  in  spite  of  the  critic- 
isms of  Macaulay  and  Carlyle,  deserves  the  thanks 
of  all  true  Boswellians.  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  has  now 
given  his  own  collection,  which  necessarily  coin- 
cides in  great  part  with  Croker's.  He  has,  more- 
over, added  to  it  a  full  apparatus  of  notes,  indexes, 
and  references  to  the  original  sources.  He  is, 
like  every  conscientious  workman,  incompletely 
satisfied  with  his  own  performance;  he  utters 
a  kind  of  groan  when  he  reflects  upon  the  im- 

>  Johnsonian  Miscellanies,  arranged  and  edited  by  George 
Birkbeck  Hill,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.     Oxford,  1897,  2  vols.  8vo. 

98 


Johnsoniana  99 

provements  which  he  might  make  even  now  if 
the  book  had  not  been  definitely  printed  off. 
Undoubtedly  every  piece  of  human  composition 
has  its  faults;  and  a  critic  has  excellent  reasons 
for  not  contradicting  a  confession  of  shortcoming : 
it  would  be  to  admit  that  he  may  perhaps  be 
blinder  than  the  author.  I  will,  therefore,  not 
commit  myself  to  the  very  unprofessional  declara- 
tion that  I  have  detected  no  shortcomings;  but 
I  will  venture  to  say  that  the  contributors  to 
Johnson's  biography  would  be  bound  to  admit,  if 
they  could  still  take  an  interest  in  the  subject, 
that  their  performances  have  been  treasured  up 
and  annotated  with  a  care  and  intelligence  unsur- 
passed in  any  similar  performance.  To  have 
Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  ten  volumes  on  one's  shelves 
is  not  only  to  have  one  of  those  delightful  col- 
lections into  which  one  can  dip  at  any  moment 
with  a  certainty  of  bringing  up  some  quaint  and 
fascinating  anecdote,  but  also  to  have  it  so  well 
arranged  that  one  can  be  sure  of  regaining  any 
half-remembered  passage.  In  regard  to  his  last 
instalment,  I  will  only  venture  to  express  one 
doubt.  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  had  thought,  he  tells  us, 
of  giving  extracts  from  Mme.  d'  Arblay's  Diary. 
Reflection  soon  convinced  him  that  the  diary  was 
"too  excellent  a  piece  of  work  to  be  hacked  in 
pieces";  he  accordingly  exhorts  readers  to  go  to 


ioo         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  lady's  book  for  themselves,  especially  if  they 
wish  to  see  Johnson's  "fun  and  comical  humour 
and  love  of  nonsense,  of  which, "  as  she  says,  "  he 
had  about  him  more  than  almost  anybody  she  ever 
saw."  Now  Jowett,  a  most  appreciative  John- 
sonian, told  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  that  if  Boswell 
had  misrepresented  Johnson  upon  any  point  it 
was  precisely  upon  this:  Boswell  had,  perhaps, 
made  Johnson  too  much  of  the  sage  and  philo- 
sopher, and  too  little  of  the  "rollicking  King 
of  Society."  If  Boswell  be  really  guilty  of  this 
omission,  it  is  surely  rather  unfortunate  not  to 
have  passages  from  the  writer  who  has  best 
supplied  the  deficiency.  Mme.  d'  Arblay's  Diary 
is  undoubtedly  a  very  charming  book;  but,  after 
all,  a  diary  by  its  nature  lends  itself  to  being 
read  in  fragments.  Perhaps  a  closer  examination 
might  justify  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  conclusion; 
but  one  would  be  inclined  to  say  on  the  first 
impression  that  room  might  have  been  found  for 
Mme.  d'  Arblay  by  excising  some  heavier  and  less 
relevant  matter.  Perhaps  Johnson's  "  Prayers  and 
Meditations, "  not  here  quite  in  their  place,  might 
have  made  way  for  samples  of  his  fun. 

The  problem  indeed  which  the  book  principally 
suggests  concerns  this  question  of  the  completeness 
of  the  Boswellian  Johnson.  To  some  of  us — I 
suspect,  indeed,  to  a  good  many — Boswell  repre- 


Johnsoniana  101 

sents  the  original  source  not  only  of  knowledge 
about  Johnson,  but  of  our  knowledge  of  English 
literature  in  general.  He  was  our  introducer 
to  the  great  anonymous  club  formed  by  English 
men  of  letters  from  the  days  when  Shakespeare 
met  Ben  Jonson  to  the  days  when  Carlyle  dis- 
coursed to  Froude.  We  became  members  of  the 
craft  in  spirit  under  Boswell's  guidance,  whether 
we  have  or  have  not  become  actually  identified 
with  it  in  the  flesh.  It  therefore  becomes  next 
to  impossible  to  abstract  from  Boswell;  all  our 
later  knowledge  has  been  more  or  less  ingrafted 
upon  him,  however  far  we  may  have  travelled  from 
the  source;  Boswell  gave  the  nucleus;  and  more 
or  less  consciously  wre  have  used  his  world  as  a 
standard  inevitably  taken  into  account  in  all  later 
judgments.  To  suppose  Boswell  non-existent  is 
for  such  readers  to  suppose  a  kind  of  organic 
change  in  our  whole  estimate  of  literary  charac- 
teristics. When  reading,  especially  about  some  of 
the  other  famous  talkers,  Coleridge's  monologues 
or  Sydney  Smith's  explosions  of  fun,  I  find  myself 
thinking  how  they  would  have  sounded  at  the 
Mitre  of  the  Turk's  Head.  Thanks  to  Boswell,  I 
take  the  Johnsonian  article  to  be  a  fixed  datum 
like  the  official  yard  at  the  Tower;  and  to  be 
asked  to  put  that  out  of  my  head  is  to  be  invited 
to  deprive  myself  of  my  only  measuring-rod.  It 


102          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

is  exceedingly  difficult,  at  any  rate,  to  put  oneself 
outside  of  Boswell  and  to  construct  a  portrait  of 
Johnson  simply  out  of  such  other  materials  as  are 
here  put  together.     I  have  read  Hawkins  and 
Mrs.  Piozzi  and  the  rest,  but  always  with  the 
help  of  the  preconceived  notions.    Where  they 
could  be  fitted  into  Boswell,  I  have  accepted  them 
as  corroborations ;  but  when  they  differed,  I  have 
probably  rejected  the  uncongenial  elements,  with 
a  perhaps  careless  assumption  that  they  must  be 
inaccurate.    And  yet,  it  seems  only  justice  to 
these  respectable  persons  to  consider  whether  we 
ought  not  to  reopen  the  point.     If  Mme.  d'  Arblay 
saw  something  of  Johnson  which  was  not  revealed 
to  Boswell,  may  we  not  discover  similar  supple- 
mentary hints  in  the  other  attempts  at  portraiture? 
Johnson's  life  confirms  one  remark  which  is 
painfully  impressed  upon  most  readers  of  bio- 
graphy.   A  really  first-rate  biography  ought,  one 
may  plausibly  argue,  to  be  the  rarest  of  books. 
A  man  can  write  a  poem  by  himself;  but  a  bio- 
graphy requires  not  only  a  capable  artist  and 
a   good   subject,   but   the   rare   combination   of 
circumstances  which  brings  them  together  under 
the  proper  conditions.     The  most  interesting  part 
of  most  men's  lives — and  Johnson  was  no  excep- 
tion— is  the  early  struggle  in  which  their  faculties 
were  developing  and  the  victory  being  won.    A 


Johnsoniana  103 

man,  too,  as  Johnson  said  to  Mrs.  Piozzi,  "com- 
monly grows  wickeder  as  he  grows  older";  he 
would  always,  he  declared,  take  the  side  of  the 
young  in  a  dispute,  "  for  you  have  at  least  a  chance 
of  virtue  till  age  has  withered  its  very  root."  So 
far  as  my  personal  experience  has  gone,  I  think 
that  Johnson  was  too  nearly  right.  At  any  rate, 
the  period  of  aspirations  and  illusions  is  the  most 
interesting.  Yet  if  a  man  lives  to  a  full  age,  the 
companions  of  his  youth  are  mostly  dead;  and 
the  survivors,  if  by  some  fortunate  chance  there  be 
any  who  are  capable  of  articulate  story-telling, 
look  back  too  sadly  and  too  bitterly  on  the  old 
days  to  restore  the  old  impressions  to  life.  Happy, 
in  this  respect  at  least,  are  those  who  die  young. 
Die  before  you  are  forty  and  you  may  have 
friends  capable  of  describing  you  at  your  best 
and  freshest.  But,  as  generally  happens,  John- 
son's early  friends  had  passed  away  long  before 
his  death.  Except  from  incidental  suggestions 
in  his  life  of  Savage  and  a  few  stray  anecdotes, 
we  have  no  vivid  impressions  of  the  period  in 
which  he  was  struggling  for  employment  on 
The  Gentleman's  Magazine  or  slaving  at  the 
Dictionary,  and  still  cheered  by  the  presence  of 
his  wife.  Johnson  himself  once  suggested  the 
names  of  one  or  two  friends  who  could  tell  his 
future  biographers  about  his  early  life.  They 


104         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

were  such  as  that  worthy  "squarson"  (in  Sydney 
Smith's  phrase) ,  Dr.  Taylor,  in  whom  even  Boswell 
could  only  once  detect  something  like  a  sparkle 
of  wit,  and  that  of  most  doubtful  quality.  The 
professional  biographer  knows  too  well  by  sad 
experience  what  is  the  kind  of  information  to 
be  extracted  from  such  sources:  probably  a 
couple  of  utterly  pointless  anecdotes,  which  he  is 
forced  to  insert  because  he  has  asked  for  them, 
and  which  introduce  some  hopeless  jumble  of 
dates  and  facts.  Johnson  would  not  have  been 
more  than  actually  unfortunate  if  his  sole  official 
biographer  had  been  such  a  one  as  Sir  John 
Hawkins,  of  whom  it  is  recorded  by  his  venerated 
friend  that  he  was  "an  honest  man  at  bottom"; 
though,  "to  be  sure,  he  is  penurious,  and  he  is 
mean,  and  it  must  be  owned  he  has  a  degree 
of  brutality  and  a  tendency  to  savageness  that 
cannot  easily  be  defended."  His  rivals,  who 
agreed, in  little  else,  agree  in  their  judgment  of 
Hawkins.  We  may  explain  away  Boswell's 
antipathy:  "Hawkins,"  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Temple,  "is,  no  doubt,  very  malevolent.  Observe 
hoi'}  he  talks  of  me  ' as  quite  unknown' I  "  Boswell, 
according  to  Miss  Hawkins,  wished  to  be  de- 
scribed as  "  The  Boswell, "  whereas  he  had  only 
appeared  as  "a  native  of  Scotland."  Hawkins's 
meanness  and  malignity,  however,  are  asserted  on 


Johnsoniana  105 

less  suspicious  evidence.  He  was  turned  out  of 
the  club  for  rudeness  to  Burke.  Jeremy  Bentham 
calls  him  a  "good-for-nothing  fellow,"  who  was 
always  wondering — which  Bentham  oddly  seems 
to  regard  as  an  inconsistency — at  the  depravity  of 
other  people.  The  amiable  Bishop  Percy  called 
him  a  "most  detestable  fellow";  and  the  suave 
Reynolds  told  Malone  that  he  was  not  only  "  mean 
and  grovelling"  but  "absolutely  dishonest."  He 
tried  to  cheat  Johnson's  black  servant,  Barber, 
out  of  a  watch  which  his  master  had  given  to  him 
when  dying ;  and  thereby  came  in  for  some  sting- 
ing ridicule  from  Person.  Hawkins,  indeed,  was 
grievously  scandalised  by  Johnson's  liberal  be- 
quest of  an  annuity  to  Barber;  and  the  more 
so,  one  guesses,  because  it  seems  to  have  been 
only  through  Hawkins's  importunity  that  Johnson 
was  induced  to  make  a  will  at  the  last  moment. 
A  man  who  succeeded  in  combining  the  censures 
of  Johnson,  Burke,  Reynolds,  Bentham,  and 
Porson,  to  say  nothing  of  Boswell,  Malone,  and 
Murphy,  must  certainly  have  had  his  weaknesses. 
Yet  Johnson  had  a  kindness  for  him;  and  one 
rather  guesses  that,  after  all,  he  was  nothing  worse 
than  an  unusually  dull,  censorious,  and  self- 
righteous  specimen  of  the  British  middle-class  of 
his  time.  His  most  characteristic  saying  is  that 
Fielding  was  the  "inventor  of  a  cant  phrase, 


106         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

goodness  of  heart,  which  means  little  more  than 
the  virtue  of  a  horse  or  a  dog."  A  good  man  is 
one  who  can  see  the  wickedness  of  Tom  Jones 
and  fully  appreciate  the  virtues  of  Blifil.  Now,  if 
Johnson  had  died  at  the  age  of  fifty-four  or  fifty- 
five,  Hawkins,  had  he  condescended  to  undertake 
the  task,  would  have  had  no  rivals  in  writing  a 
biography,  and  we  should  have  been  duly  grateful 
to  him.  For  even  in  his  very  dingy  and  distort- 
ing mirror  we  should  have  caught  sight  of  a 
grotesque,  but  impressive  figure,  an  uncouth 
Dominie  Sampson,  who,  without  Boswell,  would 
indeed  be  puzzling  but  would  still  show  touches 
of  the  familiar  qualities.  Hawkins  was  dimly 
aware,  for  example,  though  he  cannot  give  proofs, 
that  Johnson  could  be  humorous,  and  tells  one 
anecdote  of  the  "high  jinks"  which,  by  Boswell's 
era,  had  become  impossible.  When  Mrs.  Lennox 
published  one  of  her  immortal  novels  in  1751, 
Johnson  induced  Hawkins — with  a  shudder — to 
"spend  a  whole  night  in  festivity."  A  party  of 
twenty  sat  up  at  the  Devil's  Tavern ;  where  there 
was  a  "magnificent  hot  apple-pye"  stuck  with 
bay  leaves;  "because,  forsooth,  Mrs.  Lennox  had 
written  verses" — nay,  "Johnson  encircled  her 
brows"  with  laurel,  and  performed  ceremonies  of 
his  own  invention,  and  kept  it  up  till  morning. 
At  the  dawn  of  day,  his  face  "still  shone  with 


Johnsoniana  107 

meridian  splendour" — reminding  us  of  a  famous 
performance  of  Socrates,  though  Johnson  sup- 
ported his  spirits  by  lemonade  instead  of  wine, 
and  the  conversation  was  more  proper  than  that 
at  the  Platonic  Symposium,  if  hardly  so  brilliant. 
Poor  Hawkins,  however,  slunk  off  about  eight 
with  a  "sensation  of  shame"  at  the  resemblance 
which  the  night's  entertainment  bore  to  a  "de- 
bauch." He  had  the  strength  of  mind  to  over- 
come these  misgivings,  and  even  to  give  this  little 
narrative,  and  defy  any  doubts  which  it  might 
suggest  as  to  his  own  dignity.  There  was  nothing, 
he  is  anxious  to  make  us  understand,  which  would 
have  shocked  even  that  reverent  admirer  of  the 
"dixonary, "  Miss  Pinkerton  of  Chiswick  Mall. 
For  the  most  part,  it  must  be  admitted,  Haw- 
kins has  such  readers  before  his  eyes,  and 
Johnson  is  with  him  the  great  moralist  and 
author  of  the  Rambler,  whom  M.  Taine  found — 
no  wonder — to  be  unreadable.  From  Hawkins 
taken  alone,  we  might  have  dimly  divined 
aspects  of  the  Boswellian  Johnson;  but,  on  the 
whole,  the  lexicographer  would  have  been  little 
more  than  a  fine  specimen  of  the  old  denizens 
of  Grub  Street.  His  discourse,  says  Hawkins, 
was  of  the  "didactic  kind,  replete  with  original 
sentiments  expressed  in  the  strongest  and  most 
correct  terms."  Yet  even  Hawkins  cannot  quite 


io8         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

damp  the  genuine  fire  in  a  few  specimens  which  he 
has  preserved. 

Among  the  earlier  friends  we  must  reckon  one 
incomparably  superior  person.  Reynolds  knew 
Johnson  from  about  1754,  and  gives  his  impres- 
sions in  two  imaginary  conversations.  These, 
which  were  first  published  by  Croker,  are  of  very 
great  interest.  One  would  like  to  know,  indeed, 
whether  they  were  written  in  complete  independ- 
ence of  Boswell;  for  the  coincidence  is  close  and 
curious.  They  are  meant  to  illustrate  Reynolds's 
own  remark,  that  Johnson  considered  Garrick  to 
be  his  property,  and  would  allow  no  one  either  to 
praise  or  to  blame  him  without  contradiction. 
No  doubt  Reynolds  and  Boswell  had  heard 
Johnson's  comments  often  enough  to  account  for 
a  common  element;  and,  in  any  case,  the  simi- 
larity implies  a  valuable  corroboration  of  Boswell's 
perspicuity.  Reynolds,  we  may  be  sure,  had  a 
good  eye  for  character,  and  looked  at  Johnson 
from  the  position  of  an  equal,  not  a  hero-wor- 
shipper. Yet  the  general  result  is  the  same, 
though  the  sharpness  of  the  impression  is  naturally 
much  greater  in  Boswell's  verbal  report.  So, 
speaking  of  Garrick's  being  unspoilt  by  the  atten- 
tions of  great  men,  Johnson  is  made  to  say  by 
Reynolds,  that  "it  is  to  the  credit  of  Garrick  that 
he  never  laid  claim  to  this  distinction.  It  was  as 


Johnsoniana  109 

voluntarily  allowed  as  if  it  had  been  his  birthright. 
In  this  I  confess  I  looked  on  David  with  some 
degree  of  envy,  not  so  much  for  the  respect  he 
received  as  for  the  manner  of  its  being  acquired. 
What  fell  into  his  lap  unsought,  I  have  been 
forced  to  claim, "  and  so  on.  In  Boswell,  Johnson 
remarks  that  Garrick  had  had  applause  "dashed 
in  his  face,  sounded  in  his  ears,  and  went  home 
every  night  with  the  plaudits  of  a  thousand  in  his 
cranium.  Then,  Mr.  Garrick  did  not  find  but 
made  his  way  to  the  tables,  the  lives,  and  almost 
the  bedchambers,  of  the  great.  If  all  this  had 
happened  to  me,  I  should  have  had  a  couple  of 
fellows  with  long  poles  walking  before  me,  to 
knock  down  everybody  that  stood  in  the  way." 
Obviously  the  substance  is  the  same;  but  John- 
son's words,  in  passing  through  the  medium 
of  Reynolds 's  bland  and  decorous  interpretation, 
have  lost  all  the  vivid  concrete  imagery  that  fixes 
them  in  our  memory.  Johnson's  only  recorded 
blush  was  on  the  occasion  of  having  said  something 
rude  to  Reynolds;  and  we  can  easily  believe 
that  the  Reynolds  atmosphere  would  soften 
and  occasionally  emasculate  the  pithy  utter- 
ances of  his  friend.  Reynolds 's  painted  portraits 
of  "Blinking  Sam"  show  a  power  of  interpreting 
the  outward  appearance  which  no  doubt  indicates 
a  keen  perception  of  the  character  beneath. 


no         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

But  on  reading  his  portrait  in  words,  we  feel 
that  in  some  cases  a  photographic  likeness  is 
incomparably  more  effective  than  a  judiciously 
toned  and  harmonised  study  by  an  ambitious 
artist.  An  interesting  appendage  to  this  paper 
gives  the  recollections  of  Sir  Joshua's  poor  trem- 
bling sister  Frances.  When  Boswell  tried  to  get 
some  of  Johnson's  letters  from  her,  her  "too  nice 
delicacy"  prevented  her  compliance.  She  was 
ambitious  enough  to  write  some  little  poems, 
which  Johnson  assured  her  were  "very  pretty," 
and  had  much  moved  him.  Considering  that  in 
the  first  ten  lines  she  makes  "come"  rhyme  to 
"  prolong, "  "  steep  "  to  "  meet, "  and  "  averse  "  to 
"redress,"  one  is  not  surprised  that,  though 
Johnson  advised  her  not  to  burn  them,  he  did 
not  persuade  her  to  publish  them.  The  Recollec- 
tions, though  prepared  for  publication,  also  stayed 
in  her  desk.  They  show  quaintly  the  impression 
made  by  Johnson  on  the  nerves  of  the  shrinking 
poetess.  She  was  pleased  at  their  first  interview 
by  hearing  him  tell  how,  when  he  went  home  at 
two  in  the  morning,  he  would  put  pennies  into 
the  hands  of  children  sleeping  in  the  streets,  that 
they  might  buy  a  breakfast  when  they  awoke. 
She  gives  various  anecdotes  of  kindness  which  he 
had  showed — as  in  giving  her  advice  in  such  a 
delicate  matter  as  her  difficulties  with  her  famous 


Johnsoniana  1 1 1 

brother.  But  she  had  a  struggle.  He  was,  she 
says,  "in  affections  mild,"  but  could  not  be  called, 
"in  manners  gentle."  His  celebrity,  she  thinks, 
was  "  sublimated,  as  one  may  say,  with  terror  and 
with  love."  He  was  very  rarely  or  never  "inten- 
tionally asperous"  (Miss  Reynolds  has  some 
delightful  phrases),  unless  in  defence  of  religion 
or  morality;  but  he  "inverted  the  common  forms 
of  civilised  society."  Miss  Reynolds  looks  upon 
him  as  a  monstrous  combination — a  sage,  if  not  a 
saint,  confined  by  a  strange  freak  of  nature  in  the 
outside  of  a  Caliban.  Nobody,  accordingly,  has 
given  more  singular  accounts  of  his  amazing 
appearance;  especially  his  performance  of  what 
she  calls  his  "  straddles."  She  tells  how  he  would 
suddenly  contort  his  feet  into  a  geometrical 
diagram,  while  his  hands  were  raised  as  high  as 
possible  above  his  head,  or  apparently  meant  to 
imitate  a  jockey  at  full  speed;  how,  when  he 
passed  through  a  door,  he  would  whirl  poor  blind 
Miss  Williams  about  as  he  whirled  and  twisted  in 
his  gesticulation,  or  else  leave  her  groping  outside 
while  he  made  a  spring  across  the  threshold, 
apparently  attempting  (in  modern  phrase)  to 
establish  a  record  for  jumping.  When  Miss 
Reynolds  took  a  walk  with  him  in  Twickenham 
meadows,  he  collected  a  crowd  by  these  "extra- 
ordinary antics,"  and  afterwards  seesawed  so 


ii2          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

violently  while  reading  Grotius's  De  Veritate  that 
people  came  up  to  ask  what  was  the  matter.  Dr. 
Campbell  also  declares  that  Johnson  looked  like 
an  idiot,  without  a  rag  of  sense,  and  was  "  for  ever 
dancing  the  devil's  jig,"  or  making  a  drivelling 
effort  to  "whistle  in  his  absent  paroxysms."  No 
other  biographer  speaks  so  strongly  of  these 
amazing  performances;  and  probably  they  had 
got  upon  Miss  Reynolds 's  nerves.  She  amiably 
wishes  to  explain  his  apparently  "asperous" 
conduct;  and  certainly  a  man  who  was  half 
deaf,  so  blind,  as  she  declared,  that  he  could  not 
recognise  a  friend's  face  half  a  yard  off,  and,  more- 
over, liable  to  become  at  any  moment  a  mere 
bundle  of  automatic  contortions,  might  be  ex- 
pected to  tread  on  other  people's  toes,  literally 
and  metaphorically,  without  bad  intentions.  The 
"two  primaeval  causes,"  as  Miss  Reynolds  has 
it,  his  "intellectual  excellence"  and  his  "cor- 
poreal defects,"  made  him  apparently  harsh. 
The  corporeal  defects  "tended  to  darken  his 
perceptions  of  what  may  be  called  propriety 
and  impropriety  in  general  conversation,"  and 
the  intellectual  force  made  him  hit  hard.  Miss 
Reynolds,  no  doubt,  is  speaking  to  the  point; 
but  it  is  plain,  too,  that  she  would  be  horror- 
struck  rather  than  amused  whenever  Johnson 
descended  from  his  pedestal  of  the  Rambler. 


Johnsoniana  113 

He    is  still    with  her  a  heap  of   contradictory 
qualities. 

Murphy  was  another  friend  of  about  the  same 
period,  whose  essay  is  very  properly  reproduced 
here.  It  would  make  a  respectable  article  in  a 
biographical  dictionary;  but  does  not  get  beyond 
the  humble  merits  attainable  in  such  works.  It 
was  not  till  Johnson  had  emerged  from  his 
struggles  and  was  reposing  under  the  shelter  of  his 
pension  that  he  at  last  met  the  predestined  bio- 
grapher. Boswell  met  him  on  i6th  May,  1763, 
and  Mrs.  Piozzi  (Mrs.  Thrale)  nth  January,  1765. 
Of  the  two,  Mrs.  Piozzi  had  certainly  the  best 
opportunities,  and,  indeed,  opportunities  better 
than  those  which  have  come  to  the  most  famous  of 
biographers.  Lockhart  had  not  seen  so  much  of 
Scott  nor  Froude  of  Carlyle.  Both  Lockhart  and 
Froude,  however,  had  the  advantage  of  abundant 
material.  They  could  tell  the  earlier  story  in  the 
words  of  their  own  heroes;  though  in  both  cases 
the  literary  skill  which  turned  the  materials  to 
account  was  of  the  highest  order.  Johnson's 
later  correspondence  is  characteristic  enough, 
but  only  a  few  fragments  survive  to  cast  an 
occasional  gleam  of  light  upon  the  earlier  period. 
In  the  main,  therefore,  the  interest  has  to  de- 
pend, not  upon  the  narrative,  but  upon  the 
fully  developed  character.  We  have  to  infer  what 


VOL.  I. — 8 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Johnson  was  by  our  knowledge  of  what  he  be- 
came. Mrs.  Piozzi,  naturally,  did  not  attempt 
a  biography.  She  was  with  her  second  husband 
in  Italy  when  she  put  together  from  memory  the 
collection  of  anecdotes  which,  after  Boswell,  is, 
with  all  shortcomings,  the  nearest  approach  to 
a  satisfactory  portrait  of  Johnson.  Mrs.  Piozzi 's 
book  was  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  to  Boswell,  who, 
however,  has  frequently  the  pleasure  of  chuckling 
over  some  demonstrable  inaccuracy.  She  has 
been  made  into  a  kind  of  devil's  advocate  in  the 
case  of  Johnson's  canonisation.  Hayward,  in  his 
life  of  her,  took  her  part  in  the  famous  quarrel. 
He  had,  of  course,  no  difficulty  in  pointing  out 
that  the  British  prejudices  roused  by  her  second 
marriage  were  not  justifiable  in  the  court  of 
pure  reason.  An  Italian  musician  is  certainly 
not  in  the  nature  of  things  inferior  to  an  English 
brewer.  Piozzi  appears  moreover  to  have  been 
a  real  gentleman  though  he  was  a  fiddler  and 
a  foreigner;  and,  therefore,  it  must  be  fully 
granted  that  the  wrath  of  Johnson  and  other 
friends,  including  her  own  daughters,  at  Mrs. 
Thrale  becoming  Mrs.  Piozzi  was  absurd  from 
a  philosophical  point  of  view.  How  far  it  was 
excusable,  when  we  consider  the  social  atmosphere 
of  the  time,  need  not  be  considered.  The  fact 
remains  that  the  anecdotes  are  coloured  by  the 


Johnsoniana  115 

intention.  Nobody,  I  think,  can  doubt  that  the 
real  course  of  alienation  was  Mrs.  Piozzi's  know- 
ledge that  the  marriage,  rightly  or  wrongly,  would 
offend  her  own  circle,  and,  above  all,  would  shock 
her  revered  monitor.  She  is,  therefore,  inclined  to 
dwell  upon  the  "asperous"  side  of  Johnson's  per- 
formances, and  to  argue  that  the  yoke  which  had 
been  bearable  when  it  was  shared  by  Thrale 
became  altogether  intolerable  when  she  had  to 
support  it  by  herself.  Comparison  with  her  own 
journals  shows  that  this  view,  which  is  insinuated 
throughout,  did  not  really  correspond  to  the  facts. 
It  was  not  Johnson's  mode  of  devouring  his 
"pudden,"  or  his  rough  speeches  about  Mrs. 
Thrale's  sentimentalisms,  which  became  suddenly 
inexcusable,  but  the  way  in  which  he  showed  his 
contempt  for  Piozzi.  Granting  this,  however,  the 
book,  if  a  book  "with  a  tendency,"  is  still  an 
admirable  supplement  to  Boswell ;  though  it  is  now 
chiefly  interesting  as  a  measure  of  Boswell's  skill. 
We  need  not  inquire  whether  the  anecdotes  told  by 
both  are  given  most  accurately  by  one  or  the  other ; 
whether  he  told  Hannah  More  to  consider  what  her 
flattery  was  worth,  before  she  choked  him  with  it, 
or  more  gently  entreated  the  "  dearest  lady, "  after 
many  deprecations,  to  consider  its  value  before  she 
"bestowed  it  so  freely";  or  whether  he  told  Mrs. 
Piozzi  that  the  world  would  be  none  the  worse, 


1 16         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

or  that  she  would  not  herself  be  much  concerned, 
if  all  her  relations  were  spitted  like  larks  and 
roasted  for  Presto's  supper.  Was  he  ridiculing 
her  feeling  or  reproving  her  levity?  We  can 
never  know  for  certain,  but  we  can  see  clearly 
enough  in  other  cases  which  reporter  can  tell  a 
story  most  artistically.  Some  of  Bos  well's  critics 
speak  as  though  his  only  merit  were  in  his  accuracy. 
He  had  the  courage,  though  his  contemporaries 
gave  it  uglier  names,  to  take  out  his  notebook 
and  set  down  the  words  at  the  instant  when 
they  dropped  from  Johnson's  lips.  He  realised, 
though  in  a  queer  way,  the  immense  value  of 
a  contemporary  note,  and  was  as  great  a  reformer 
in  biography  as  Gibbon  in  history.  That  un- 
doubtedly was  a  merit,  especially  at  the  time 
when  biographers  in  general  thought  it  a  duty 
even  to  alter  such  contemporary  documents  as 
they  had ;  and  to  give  without  warning,  as  Mason 
did  in  the  case  of  Gray,  or  even  Lord  Sheffield  in 
the  case  of  Gibbon,  not  the  actual  letter,  but 
a  compound  of  different  letters.  Even  Boswell 
indeed,  as  appears  from  his  notebook,  thought 
himself  at  liberty  to  touch  up  phrases,  though 
he  may  have  thought  that  he  was  bringing 
rough  notes  nearer  to  the  truth.  But  it  is  plain 
that  this  was  only  one  condition  of  his  success. 
Most  proverbial  good  sayings,  one  is  inclined  to 


Johnsoniana  117 

suspect,  are  partly  due  to  the  reporters,  or  rather 
to  generations  of  reporters.  They  have  been 
smoothed  and  polished  like  pebbles  on  a  beach  by 
continuous  attrition  in  the  mouths  of  men,  and  if 
we  could  see  them  in  their  original  enunciation 
they  would  be  comparatively  rough  and  clumsy. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  detached  witticism  loses, 
and  may  entirely  change,  its  significance  when 
taken  as  an  isolated  gem.  The  special  skill  of 
Boswell  is  in  his  power  of  giving,  not  the  felicitous 
phrase  by  itself,  but  the  dramatic  situation  in 
which  it  was  struck  out,  and  to  which,  even  in  its 
unpolished  state,  it  owed  its  impressiveness.  In 
that  he  is  not  only  superlative  but,  I  fancy, 
unique.  There  are  countless  collections  of  "  anas" 
and  "table-talks"  from  which  we  get  some  im- 
pression of  the  good  things  said  by  famous  men. 
There  are  imaginary  conversations  which  are 
sometimes  admirable,  even  though  we  perceive, 
as  we  read  them,  that  no  real  conversation  was 
ever  so  continuous,  or  logical,  or  polished. 
Boswell  seems  to  be  alone  in  the  art  of  presenting 
us  in  a  few  lines  with  a  conversation  which  is 
obviously  as  real  as  it  is  dramatic.  We  listen  to 
Johnson,  but  to  Johnson  surrounded  by  Garrick 
and  Goldsmith  and  Burke  and  Wilkes,  and 
appreciate  not  only  the  thing  that  was  said,  but 
what  gave  it  point  and  appropriateness  at  the  time, 


n8         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and  under  the  circumstances.  The  fact  was,  of 
course,  made  possible  by  the  nature  of  the  John- 
sonian circle.  There  are  many  admirable  sayings 
in  the  table-talk  of  Coleridge,  but  a  report  of  the 
whole  would  have  obviously  given  us  nothing 
but  a  diluted  and  discursive  lecture.  Carlyle's  talk 
would  have  been  in  the  same  relation  to  his 
Reminiscences  or  his  Latter-day  Pamphlets.  But 
Johnson's  talk  was  superior  to  his  writings,  just 
because  it  was  struck  out  in  the  heat  of  "wit 
combats"  with  a  circle  which,  even  if  it  took  the 
passive  part  of  mere  sounding-board,  was  essential 
to  the  effect.  No  one,  however,  except  the 
inimitable  Boswell  clearly  saw  this  or  was  able  to 
turn  the  remark  to  account.  Mrs.  Piozzi  gives 
us  good  things,  but  they  are  detached  and  discon- 
tinuous. She  reports  the  phrases  which  for  one 
reason  or  other  had  happened  to  stick  in  her 
memory.  She  is  evidently  eking  out  her  recol- 
lections by  bits  of  written  Johnsonese.  Johnson 
might  perhaps  have  written  in  the  Rambler,  but 
could  never  have  said  in  talk,  that  certain  people 
are  "  forced  to  linger  life  away  in  tasteless  stupidity 
and  choose  to  count  the  moments  by  remembrance 
of  pain  instead  of  enjoyment  of  pleasure."  She 
probably  gives  an  unintentionally  false  colouring 
to  some  of  the  sayings ;  and,  in  any  case,  is  unable 
to  make  a  harmonious  blending  of  the  various 


Johnsoniana  119 

elements.  She  remembers  every  now  and  then 
that  Johnson  was,  on  her  showing,  to  be  a  man 
of  the  highest  virtue;  and  she  proceeds  to  tell  us 
how  much  he  felt  for  the  poor;  or  how  sorry  he 
could  be  when  he  found  that  he  had  wounded  a 
man's  feelings  unintentionally,  or  what  excellent 
advice  and  help  he  would  give  to  friends  who  were 
really  in  want  of  it.  Mrs.  Piozzi,  however,  being  a 
singularly  quick  and  vivacious  lady,  with  a  sar- 
castic and  occasionally  cynical  turn,  and  no  very 
profound  appreciation  of  character,  just  stitches 
her  anecdotes  together  as  they  come,  and  does  not 
trouble  herself  to  blend  them  into  a  consistent 
whole. 

The  more  we  read,  in  short,  the  more  sensible 
we  become  of  the  unique  merits  of  our  old  friend. 
He  is  far  too  familiar  to  justify  any  elaborate 
analysis  of  character,  but  a  word  or  two  may 
help  to  explain  how  his  superiority  to  his  rivals 
arose  from  his  strange  idiosyncrasy.  The  letters 
to  Temple,  first  published  in  1857,  show  the  man 
even  more  distinctly  than  the  life  of  Johnson; 
and  I  have  sometimes  wondered  that  so  curious  a 
book  has  not  been  more  generally  read.  As  a 
self -revelation  it  is  almost  equal  to  a  fragment  of 
Pepys.  Pepys  was  secretive  enough  to  keep  his 
diary  to  himself,  whereas  Boswell  seems  to  have 
been  equally  willing  to  confide  all  his  weaknesses 


120         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

to  a  friend.  That  quality,  whatever  it  may  be, 
seems  to  have  been  omitted  from  his  composition 
which  makes  most  people  feel  the  absolute  neces- 
sity of  a  veil  of  privacy.  They  have  feelings  of 
which  they  are  not  ashamed,  but  which  it  would 
be  agony  to  expose  to  the  gaze  of  their  neigh- 
bours. Boswell  seems  to  have  enjoyed  laying 
bare  everything  that  he  felt ;  he  would  apparently 
have  wished  his  confessor,  if  he  had  had  one,  to 
publish  his  avowals  in  the  papers.  "Not  a  bent 
sixpence  cares  he,"  as  he  says  of  himself  in  a 
boyish  song,  "whether  with  him  or  at  him  you 
laugh."  To  good-natured  people  there  was  some- 
thing attractive  in  the  confidingness  which  is 
implied  in  all  his  absurdities.  Whether  he  intro- 
duces himself  to  the  hero  Paoli,  the  moralist 
Johnson,  or  to  Mitchell,  then  the  English 
Ambassador  at  the  Court  of  Frederick,  he 
immediately  proceeds  to  give  him  full  informa- 
tion as  to  the  state  of  his  soul.  No  other  human 
being  could  have  proposed  that  the  great  Chatham 
should  "  honour  him  with  a  letter  now  and  then," 
in  order  to  keep  him  "ardent  in  the  pursuits  of 
virtuous  fame."  He  was  at  the  time  only  known 
to  Chatham  as  the  author  of  the  book  upon 
Corsica,  but  thought  it  perfectly  natural  that 
the  magnificent  statesman  should  become  his 
confidential  adviser.  Many  distinguished  people. 


Johnsoniana  121 

besides  Johnson  seem  to  have  been  flattered  by 
his  almost  pathetic  trust  in  their  benevolence. 
His  simplicity  and  good-nature  were  so  unmis- 
takable that,  as  Burke  put  it,  they  scarcely 
seemed  to  be  virtuous.  People  overlooked  the 
impudence  in  consideration  of  the  genuine  good- 
will. David  Hume  and  Wilkes  seem  to  have  felt 
the  charm  as  much  as  Johnson  and  Burke.  A 
man  who  takes  you  into  his  confidence  so  frankly 
is  at  least  paying  you  a  compliment.  It  was  only 
such  fine  gentlemen  as  Walpole  and  Gibbon,  who 
stood  upon  their  dignity,  and  would  not  take 
liberties  even  upon  invitation,  lest  liberties  should 
be  taken  with  them,  whom  Boswell  found  intoler- 
able. Gibbon  in  particular  was  an  "  ugly,  affected, 
disgusting  fellow,"  who  "poisoned"  the  club  for 
him.  Still  worse,  indeed,  were  the  people  who 
saw  in  Boswell's  simplicity  a  chance  of  making 
him  a  butt  for  rough  practical  jokes.  The  syco- 
phants who  surrounded  his  patron,  Lord  Lowther, 
and  the  Bar  of  the  Northern  Circuit  seem  to  have 
embittered  the  poor  man's  last  years  by  using 
him  in  that  capacity.  His  disposition,  in  fact, 
was  not  conducive  to  success  in  practical  life. 
Boswell  was  far  too  easy-going  and  too  apt  to 
snatch  at  any  indulgences  which  came  in  his 
way  to  play  an  effective  part  in  a  game  of  rough- 
and-tumble.  The  characteristic  result  was  that 


122          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Boswell  became  a  kind  of  interested  looker-on, 
like  a  delicate  boy  at  a  rough  public  school,  who 
admires  the  games,  though  he  cannot  take  part 
in  them,  and  worships  the  heroes.  To  his  own 
fancy  he  was  a  kind  of  Hamlet.  He  explains  to 
Paoli,  as  he  had  already  explained  to  Mitchell, 
that  he  had  "intensely  applied  himself  to  meta- 
physical research,"  and  got  "beyond  his  depth." 
He  had  thus  become  for  ever  incapable  of  taking 
a  part  in  active  life.  He  was  proud,  as  we  know, 
of  his  hypochondria;  and  though  he  frankly  con- 
fesses to  less  refined  causes  of  most  of  his  fits, 
he  always  cherishes  the  belief  that  they  imply  a 
philosophical  temperament.  He  delights  in  sup- 
posing himself  to  be  puzzling  over  the  problems 
of  fate  and  free-will.  But  he  has  not  the  courage 
to  be  a  thorough  sceptic  or  pessimist.  At  bottom, 
he  feels  the  world  to  be  infinitely  too  enjoyable 
to  admit  of  a  gloomy  solution;  and  so  his  real 
solace  is  in  day-dreaming.  He  is  always  in 
imagination  overcoming  his  difficulties  and  rising 
to  fame  and  fortune.  In  a  very  characteristic 
letter  (in  1789),  he  explains  all  his  troubles:  Pitt 
had  been  "ill-advised  enough"  not  to  patronise 
a  "man  of  my  popular  and  pleasant  talents." 
His  wife  was  dying;  his  property  embarrassed; 
and  he  was  induced  to  adopt  Johnson's  melan- 
choly view  of  the  vanity  of  human  wishes.  And 


Johnsoniana  123 

yet  he  is  still  full  of  "projects  to  attain  wealth 
and  eminence";  and  observes  that  he  is  always 
"looking  back  and  looking  forward,"  and  won- 
dering "how  he  will  feel  in  situations  which  he 
anticipates  in  fancy."  In  Corsica  he  sang  Hearts 
of  Oak  to  the  natives,  and  fancied  himself  "a 
recruiting  sea-officer,  with  his  chorus  of  Corsicans 
aboard  the  British  fleet."  He  rode  Paoli's  own 
horse,  decked  with  "crimson  velvet"  and  "broad 
gold  lace,"  and  fancied  himself  for  a  moment  to 
be  the  idol  of  an  enthusiastic  population.  He  is 
always  playing  at  being  something  delightful. 
He  makes  a  vow  "under  a  solemn  yew-tree,"  in 
the  garden  of  his  friend  Temple,  and  becomes 
straightway  a  model  of  all  the  virtues.  True, 
he  did  not  keep  it  "religiously,"  but  that  was 
because  "a  little  wine  hurried  him  on  too  much." 
He  promises  Paoli,  however,  that  he  will  take  no 
wine  for  a  year,  and,  having  kept  his  promise  for 
three  weeks  at  the  time  of  writing,  feels  that  he 
is  virtually  a  reformed  character.  The  queerest 
result  of  this  strange  muddle  between  the  ideal 
and  the  practical  appears  in  his  letters  to  Temple 
upon  his  love  affairs.  He  writes  an  admirable 
panegyric  upon  marriage  to  his  friend,  and  re- 
marks, that  he  "looks  with  horror  on  adultery." 
This,  however,  is  part  of  a  passage  in  which  he 
explains  that  he  has  an  amiable  mistress  who, 


124         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

unfortunately,  has  also  a  husband.  His  clerical 
friend  hereupon  seems  to  have  blamed  him  for 
"  keeping  another  man 's  wif e. ' '  Boswell  is  startled 
at  the  phrase.  That  was  literally  his  scheme,  as 
he  admits,  but  "imagination  represented  it  just 
as  being  fond  of  a  pretty,  lively  black  little  lady, 
who,  to  oblige  me,  stayed  in  Edinburgh,  and  I 
very  genteelly  paid  her  expenses."  A  year  later 
Temple  gives  him  a  "moral  lecture"  for  some 
scrape  into  which  he  has  fallen,  and  gets  for 
answer  that  Boswell's  "warm  imagination  looks 
forward  with  great  complacency  on  the  sobriety,  the 
healthfulness,  and  the  worth  of  his  future  life." 
His  imagination  retained  this  inestimable  power 
up  to  the  last,  and  it  must  be  admitted,  would 
be  an  admirable  consoler  to  a  feeble  conscience. 
It  told  him  one  truth,  however,  in  1790,  namely, 
that  he  was  writing  what  would  be,  "without 
exception,  the  most  entertaining  book"  that  his 
correspondent  had  ever  read.  Too  characteris- 
tically he  had  realised  his  aspirations  just  when 
success  became  valueless.  But,  as  a  rule,  he  is 
in  the  odd  position  of  one  who  lives  in  a  dream 
world,  and  yet  one  whose  dreams  are  always  a 
version  of  realities. 

Boswell  is  thus  always  playing  at  being  some- 
thing else,  a  melancholy  philosopher  or  a  virtuous 
judge  or  patriot;  when  he  heard  music,  as  he  told 


Johnsoniana  125 

Johnson,  he  felt  himself  "  plunging  into  the  thick 
of  the  battle";  and  after  too  convivial  an  even- 
ing, he  retired  in  imagination  to  the  deserts  and 
adopted  Rousseau's  ideal  "savage  state."  Still, 
as  nobody  appreciated  more  heartily  the  actual 
and  solid  pleasures  of  life,  he  could  never  detach 
himself  from  the  world,  though  he  did  become 
disqualified  for  success.  He  could  always  restore 
his  complacency  by  virtuous  resolutions,  and  the 
friendship  of  good-natured  people,  and  roamed 
through  Vanity  Fair  lingering  at  every  booth 
and  distracted  between  the  charms  of  every  variety 
of  enjoyment.  He  was  precisely  in  the  humour, 
therefore,  to  become  a  disciple  of  Johnson.  For 
Johnson  was  the  professor  of  a  science  which  at 
that  period  was  most  flourishing.  He  was  de- 
voted, as  he  and  his  friends  would  have  said,  to 
the  study  of  human  nature.  He  was  a  "  moralist," 
not  meaning,  as  we  might  now  mean,  that  he 
held  any  particular  theories  about  "hedonism" 
or  "self-realisation,"  but  that  he  was  always 
observing  concrete  human  beings,  their  eccen- 
tricities and  miseries  and  varieties  of  character, 
with  the  eagerness  of  a  scientific  student.  His 
favourite  quotation,  according  to  Mrs.  Piozzi, 
was  Pope's  saying  about  the  "proper  study  of 
mankind."  The  phrase,  however,  was  taking  a 
meaning  rather  different  from  that  which  it  had 


i26         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

borne  in  the  days  of  Pope.  The  typical  man  of 
Pope's  circle  was  to  be  found  in  Courts  and  at 
Ministers'  levees.  He  was  the  person  to  be 
lectured  upon  manners  by  Chesterfield  and  initi- 
ated into  Machiavellian  worldly  wisdom.  John- 
son, as  the  famous  letter  to  Chesterfield  shows, 
expressed  among  other  things  the  intrusion  of  a 
new  social  element:  the  rise  of  Grub  Street  to 
consideration,  if  not  respect.  He  and  his  com- 
panions had  known  the  world  upon  which  Pope 
and  his  friends  looked  down  with  scorn,  the  world 
of  sponging-houses  and  bailiffs  and  translators 
kept  in  Curll's  garrets.  The  study  of  "human 
nature,"  as  Johnson,  and  Fielding,  and  Hogarth, 
and  their  contemporaries  understood  it,  had  to 
take  into  account  the  life  of  London  slums,  and 
to  consider  a  good  many  bald  facts,  coarse  and 
repulsive  enough,  which  their  predecessors  had 
regarded  as  beneath  the  notice  of  a  gentleman. 
Dimly,  too,  they  became  aware  of  the  passions 
which  were  leading,  though  they  knew  it  not,  to 
a  great  social  upheaval,  and  beginning  to  be 
sentimental  and  denounce  luxury  and  believe  in 
the  state  of  nature  or  the  rights  of  man.  Johnson 
was  rich  in  such  experience,  and  his  best  sayings 
are  summaries  of  the  reflections  which  it  sug- 
gested. His  reading  and  his  criticism  had  all 
the  same  purpose.  He  loved  biography  and  such 


Johnsoniana  127 

history  as  deals  with  individual  character.  He 
could  not  bear  to  talk  about  the  "  Punic  War,"  as 
he  told  Mrs.  Piozzi — formal  accounts  of  cam- 
paigns and  conquests;  but  he  loved  the  history 
which  showed  "how  our  ancestors  lived."  He 
was  even  modern  in  his  approval  of  early  attempts 
to  give  accounts  of  "common  manners"  rather 
than  political  events.  He  always  estimates  books, 
from  Shakespeare  to  Richardson,  by  the  "know- 
ledge of  the  human  heart"  which  he  considers 
them  to  contain.  He  loves  London  as  a  botanist 
might  love  a  fertile  country,  on  account  of  the 
abundance  of  the  material  for  his  favourite  study. 
He  sent  Boswell  and  Windham  to  "explore 
Wapping"  on  account  of  the  variety  of  "modes 
of  life"  to  be  found  there.  Boswell  is  generally 
ridiculed  for  his  willingness  to  visit  even  such 
people  as  the  famous  Mrs.  Rudd,  who  was  pro- 
bably guilty  of  forgery  and  something  very  like 
murder.  Johnson  would  have  visited  her  too, 
he  said,  if  they  had  not  already  got  into  the 
habit  of  putting  things  into  the  papers ;  and  both 
would  have  justified  themselves  on  the  pretext 
that  they  were  studying  "human  nature."  When 
people  go  to  Wapping  now  it  is  generally  to  carry 
our  Mr.  Charles  Booth's  admirable  method  of 
investigating  great  social  problems.  They  deal 
with  criminals  by  statistical  tables,  not  by  seek- 


1 28          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

ing  the  society  of  eminent  murderers,  or  looking 
on  at  executions.  We  talk  about  sociology,  not 
the  study  of  human  nature,  and  investigate  the 
manners  and  customs  of  primitive  savages  in- 
stead of  generalising  our  private  personal  ex- 
perience. The  speciality  of  Johnson's  period  is 
precisely  this  desire  to  consider  the  concrete 
human  being,  from  Wapping  to  St.  James's,  as 
the  subject-matter  of  a  separate  and  intensely  in- 
teresting science. 

This,  not  to  go  further,  characterises  BoswelTs 
view  of  Johnson.  Boswell,  already  inclined  to 
study  life  after  a  quaint  and  desultory  fashion 
enough,  to  put  himself  in  contact  with  all  manner 
of  famous  people  and  to  play  their  parts  in 
imagination,  imagined,  not  without  excuse,  that 
he  had  found  in  Johnson  an  embodiment  of  all 
the  wisdom  to  be  extracted  from  manifold  ex- 
perience of  life,  guided  by  profound  penetration 
into  character.  Johnson's  conversation  is  de- 
lightful because  it  is  full  of  the  pithy  aphorisms 
which  concentrate  the  results  of  the  experience. 
Johnson  is  the  half-inspired  prophet  who  can  tell 
him  what  fruit  to  grow  in  his  garden,  what  pro- 
fession he  should  adopt,  and  how  he  should 
behave  to  his  wife  or  his  father.  If  there  were 
such  a  thing  as  a  scientific  knowledge  of  the 
human  heart,  and  if  Johnson  had  possessed  it, 


Johnsoniana  129 

there  would  be  much  sense  in  this;  and  so  far  as 
strong  common -sense  could  be  a  substitute  for 
science,  Bos  well  was  perhaps  not  so  far  wrong 
in  his  choice  of  an  oracle.  It  helps  to  explain — 
not  Boswell's  skill,  for  that  is  as  inexplicable  as 
all  genius — but  the  special  distinction  between 
Boswell  and  his  rivals.  Boswell,  that  is,  had  not 
only  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  prophet,  but  had  really 
imbibed  his  method.  The  others,  from  Hawkins 
up  to  Mrs.  Piozzi,  simply  take  the  point  of  view 
of  the  ordinary  biographer.  They  assume  that 
their  readers  have  studied  The  Rambler  or  Rasselas 
or  the  Dictionary,  and  want  to  know  something 
about  the  author.  They  collect  as  many  good 
sayings  and  characteristic  anecdotes  as  they  can, 
and  argue  as  to  the  justice  of  the  various  charges 
of  rudeness  and  so  forth.  Some  of  them,  who, 
from  no  fault  of  Dr.  Hill's,  fill  rather  more  pages 
than  we  could  wish,  think  that  a  great  man  ought 
to  be  mainly  the  hero  of  a  religious  tract,  and 
treat  us  simply  to  minute  and  painful  descriptions 
of  the  poor  man's  last  days.  In  any  case,  the 
real  Johnson  is  for  them  the  author,  and  their 
function  is  simply  to  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  his 
readers.  Boswell  being,  in  however  quaint  a 
fashion,  a  man  of  real  genius,  saw  instinctively 
something  more.  Johnson  was,  in  the  first  place, 
his  oracle — the  man  who  has  extracted  the  truth 


130          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

implicitly  written  in  the  book  of  human  life. 
But  then,  besides  this,  Johnson  might  also  be 
considered  as  himself  a  page  in  the  book.  To 
understand  his  significance  we  must  take  not 
merely  his  utterances,  but  their  whole  setting, 
the  "environment"  as  well  as  the  individual. 
Boswell  has  to  study  the  Johnson  circle  as  he  was 
sent  to  study  Wapping.  Charing  Cross  is  pro- 
foundly interesting  because  through  it  flows  a  full 
tide  of  humanities.  The  biography  is  not  merely 
an  account  of  Johnson,  but  what  we  should  call 
a  study  of  human  life.  Johnson  himself  is,  of 
course,  in  the  foreground — he  was,  so  to  speak, 
a  great  nugget,  a  gigantic  mass  of  "human 
nature."  He  had  that  article,  like  Carlyle,  in  so 
much  abundance  as  to  shock  and  alienate  a  good 
many  people  who  shrink  from  the  rough  ore, 
however  full  it  may  be  of  precious  metal.  To 
study  him,  therefore,  was  to  study  a  type  of  sur- 
passing interest,  and  nobody  was  really  freer  than 
Boswell  from  what  Macaulay,  erroneously,  I 
should  say,  called  the  lues  Boswelliana,  the  un- 
qualified admiration  even  of  a  hero's  failings.  He 
would  not,  as  he  told  Hannah  More,  make  his 
lion  a  cat  to  please  anybody,  and  perceived  that 
the  shadows  were  necessary  to  do  justice  to  the 
lights.  But  the  point  in  which  he  is  even  more 
unique  is  the  perception  that  Johnson,  though 


Johnsoniana  131 

always  in  the  foreground,  is  still  to  be  only  in 
the  foreground  of  a  group  of  living  and  moving 
human  beings.  The  dramatic  skill  displayed  in 
such  descriptions  as  the  famous  scene  with  Wilkes 
enables  him  to  do  what  is  not  even  approached 
by  his  rivals.  It  makes  us  incidentally  share 
Boswell's  own  feeling.  He  comes  up  from  Edin- 
burgh with  such  a  "gust"  for  London  society  as 
excited  even  Johnson's  wonder.  It  is  not  a  mere 
search  for  pleasure  or  amusement,  but  a  kind  of 
scientific  zeal,  that  animates  him.  He  has  a 
genuine  desire  to  see  life  at  its  fullest,  all  human 
passions  stimulated  to  the  utmost  by  the  conflict 
of  multitudes,  and  shown  in  the  greatest  variety 
by  the  mixture  of  men  of  all  ranks  and  condi- 
tions, to  see  the  keenest  intellects  of  the  day 
roused  to  activity  by  constant  intercourse,  and  to 
have  before  his  eyes  every  variety  of  incident, 
from  a  change  of  Ministry  to  a  procession  of 
criminals  to  Tyburn  tree.  The  insatiable  curiosity 
is  only  stimulated  by  the  circumstance  that  he  is 
jostled  aside  by  men  of  stronger  fibre  and  obliged 
to  look  on  or  to  play  his  part  by  "a  warm  ima- 
gination "  instead  of  actual  participation.  This,  I 
take  it,  is  why  Boswell's  rivals  seem  to  give  us 
merely  a  collection  of  detached  anecdotes,  while  in 
Boswell  all  the  persons  seem  to  come  suddenly  to 
life  and  give  us  a  real  insight  into  the  whole  social 


132  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

sphere  instead  of  being  mere  lay  figures.  Mme 
d'Arblay  perhaps  deserves  the  exception  made  in 
her  favour,  in  so  far  as  she  has  the  real  novelist's 
instinct,  and  gives  us  lively  accounts  of  incidents 
instead  of  isolated  facts.  But  Mme.  d'  Arblay 
scarcely  sees  more  than  one  aspect  of  Johnson— 
the  famous  old  moralist  who  likes  to  make  a  pet 
of  a  charming  young  woman,  and  relaxes  into 
more  than  usual  playfulness  in  course  of  adminis- 
tering delightful  doses  of  pardonable  flattery.  Of 
the  others,  even  of  Mrs.  Piozzi,  we  can  hardly 
say  more  than  that  they  become  amusing  by  the 
light  of  Boswell.  He  has  revealed  the  actors  to 
us  with  such  skill  that  even  the  dry  and  pompous 
narratives  enable  us  to  supply  what  was  wanting, 
as  in  the  dullest  of  reports  we  can  sometimes 
hear  the  accents  of  a  familiar  friend 

NOTE. — Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald  has  recently  published 
a  "Critical  Examination"  of  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's 
Johnsonian  editions.  Mr.  Fitzgerald  refers  more  than 
once  to  the  fact  that  I  have  been  "beguiled"  into 
speaking  of  the  edition  of  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson 
as  the  best  known  to  me.  Indeed,  it  seems  that  the 
edition  has  been  very  generally  welcomed;  and  Mr. 
Fitzgerald's  severe  criticism  comes  as  a  rather  sur- 
prising discord  in  a  general  chorus  of  praise.  In 
any  case,  I  feel  it  right  to  say  a  few  words  in  defence 
of  an  opinion  to  which  I  confess  that  I  still  adhere 
without  hesitation.  My  reason  is  simple.  I  have 
for  years  made  constant  use  of  the  Life  of  Johnson, 


Johnsoniana  133 

and  have  found  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  notes  exceedingly 
useful.  Whenever  I  am  in  want  of  information 
about  any  of  the  Johnson  circle,  I  regularly  turn  for 
help  to  this  edition,  and  I  very  seldom  open  it  without 
gaining  some  light  upon  the  matter  in  hand.  I  think 
that  I  should  have  been  ungrateful  if  I  had  not 
acknowledged  so  much;  and  I  will  briefly  state  why 
I  cannot  retract  my  acknowledgment.  Mr.  Fitzgerald 
criticises  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  for  giving  a  great  deal  of 
irrelevant  information,  for  frequently  misunderstand- 
ing his  author,  and  for  frequent  inaccuracy.  The 
first  count  depends  more  or  less  upon  what  seems  to 
me  to  be  a  matter  for  fair  difference  of  opinion.  I 
quite  admit  that  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  has  given  a 
quantity  of  information  in  his  notes  which  has  little 
or  no  direct  bearing  upon  Johnson  himself,  or  upon 
Boswell's  discharge  of  his  biographical  duties.  But 
I  also  confess  that  I  have  found  such  notes  very 
pleasant  reading,  and  been  grateful  for  them.  I  like 
an  occasional  excursion  into  matters  suggested  by  the 
text  and  illustrative  of  the  period.  If  Mr.  Fitzgerald 
does  not  like  them,  he  has  after  all  the  simple  remedy 
of  not  reading  them.  To  give  an  example:  Mr. 
Fitzgerald  ridicules  a  note  (Hill's  Boswell,  iii.,  241) 
in  which  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  illustrates  by  several 
quotations  the  curious  change  in  the  meaning  of  the 
word  "respectable."  Chesterfield  speaks,  for  exam- 
ple, of  the  hour  of  death  as  "at  least  a  very  respectable 
one,"  and  Hannah  More  thinks  a  roomful  of  portraits 
of  admirals  a  "respectable  sight."  The  note  is 
certainly  superfluous,  but  I  am  grateful  for  the  know- 
ledge conveyed  in  a  few  lines  as  to  a  really  curious 
instance  of  the  shifting  of  meaning  in  a  familiar  word. 
Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill,  again,  defends  Johnson  against 
Macaulay's  statement  that  he  knew  nothing  of  the 


1 34          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

country,  and  despised  travelling.  In  the  course  of  his 
remarks  he  gives  the  populations  of  Lichfield,  Oxford, 
and  Birmingham,  where  Johnson  spent  most  of  his 
early  life,  to  show  that  they  were  then  small  country 
towns,  and  points  out  that  a  boyish  perusal  of  Martin's 
account  of  the  Hebrides  had  stimulated  the  curiosity 
long  afterwards  satisfied  by  the  journey  with  Boswell. 
Mr.  Fitzgerald  ridicules  these  statements,  which  occur 
in  a  disquisition  in  Appendix  B  to  the  third  volume. 
No  doubt  they  are  not  strictly  necessary  but  to  me 
they  really  illustrate  some  of  Johnson's  characteristic 
prejudices,  and  qualify  one  of  Macaulay's  slashing 
assaults.  I  was  again  innocent  enough  to  be  grateful 
for  them. 

This  suggests  another  point.  Mr.  Fitzgerald  ridi- 
cules Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  enormous  and  self-made 
index.  Undoubtedly  it  errs,  if  anything,  by  excess. 
That  is  a  very  rare  fault,  and  a  fault  on  the  right  side. 
I  have  found  the  index  exceedingly  useful  on  very 
many  occasions,  and  been  grateful  for  the  labour 
bestowed,  which  has  often  saved  me  a  great  deal  of 
trouble.  The  present  occasion  is  an  instance.  Mr, 
Fitzgerald  has  given  hardly  any  references  to  the 
passages  which  he  criticises;  and  I  have  had  to  find 
them  by  the  help  of  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  himself.  In 
some  cases,  I  have  been  unable  to  verify  Mr.  Fitzgerald's 
references  even  with  that  help,  and  I  am  forced  to 
suspend  my  judgment  of  his  criticisms.  Thus  (p.  13) 
he  accuses  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  of  giving  "sixteen 
passages"  to  illustrate  the  meaning  of  "Hockley  in 
the  Hole."  In  the  only  passage  which  I  can  find 
about  "Hockley  in  the  Hole"  (vol.  iii.,  134),  Dr.  Birk- 
beck Hill  illustrates  the  meaning  by  quotations  from 
The  Spectator,  Fielding's  Jonathan  Wild,  and  The 
Beggars'  Opera.  That  is,  there  are  only  three  passages 


Johnsoniana  135 

cited,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  not  one  too  many.  But 
the  absence  of  a  reference  leaves  a  bare  possibility 
that  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  has  quoted  other  passages 
elsewhere.  Considering,  however,  the  completeness 
of  the  index,  I  believe  that  Mr.  Fitzgerald  has  some- 
how made  an  odd  mistake  in  counting. 

This  is  the  more  probable  because  I  find  other 
singular  mistakes,  which  show  that  Mr.  Fitzgerald, 
in  accusing  his  author  of  inaccuracy — doubtless  the 
worst  of  faults  in  an  editor — has  himself  been  in- 
accurate with  the  passages  before  his  eyes,  and  his 
attention,  one  supposes,  fully  awake.  At  page  4, 
he  says  that  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  index  proves  that 
the  editor  had  never  seen  Boswell's  first  production — 
"certainly  never  read  it."  The  "proof"  is  that  in 
the  index  it  is  mentioned  in  italics  as  "The  Club"  at 
Newmarket.  In  the  text,  he  adds,  it  is  again  written 
"the  Club."  Now  the  real  title  was  the  Cub,  as  any 
one  must  perceive  who  has  read  the  book.  I  turn 
to  the  index  (vol.  vi.,  p.  25),  and  there  find  Cub  at 
Newmarket  correctly  entered  between  "critics"  and 
"curiosity."  I  look  back  to  the  text  (vol.  i.,  383,  n.  3), 
and  there,  it  is  true,  the  word  is  written  "Club." 
But  as  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  quotes  a  phrase  from  the 
preface,  in  which  the  Jockey  Club  at  Newmarket  is 
mentioned,  I  am  charitable  enough  to  believe  that  he 
had  really  seen  the  book,  and  that  "Club"  in  the 
text  is  probably  a  correction  introduced  by  the  ex- 
cessive zeal  of  a  reader  misled  by  the  reference  to 
the  Club.  At  page  n,  Mr.  Fitzgerald  comments 
upon  a  note  in  which  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  explains  a 
passage  in  Johnson's  letter  on  receiving  the  M.A. 
degree  at  Oxford  by  referring  to  a  seditious  placard 
published  during  the  period  of  excitement  over  the 
famous  Oxfordshire  election  in  1754.  The  letter, 


136         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

says  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  was  written  in  February  1755, 
and  the  placard  appeared  in  "July,  five  or  six  months 
later.  So  the  whole  speculation  topples  over!"  It 
would,  were  it  not  that  the  placard  appeared  in  July 
1754  (not  1755),  as  is  indeed  obvious  from  Dr.  Birk- 
beck  Hill's  reference  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine 
of  that  year  (vol.  i.,  282).  At  p.  16,  Mr.  Fitzgerald 
attacks  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  dates.  Dr.  Birkbeck 
Hill  (vol.  i.,  146)  says  that  Johnson  had  his  first  inter- 
view with  Hogarth  "sixteen  years"  after  coming  to 
London.  "This  cannot  be  accurate,"  says  Mr.  Fitz- 
gerald. Why?  The  date  of  the  interview  is  fixed 
by  its  happening  soon  after  the  execution  of  Dr. 
Cameron  for  his  share  in  the  '45.  Therefore,  Mr. 
Fitzgerald  assumes,  it  took  place,  in  1745-6.  If  he  had 
not  been  aware  of  Cameron's  well-known  story,  he 
might  have  found  it  in  the  note  before  his  eyes, 
where  the  date  of  the  execution  is  stated,  namely, 
yth  June,  1753.  As  Johnson  came  to  London  in 
1737,  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  is  again  quite  right.  I  will 
give  one  other  strange  proof  of  Mr.  Fitzgerald's 
carelessness.  In  the  collection  of  Johnson's  letters, 
Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  speaks  of  Reynolds's  prosperity  in 
1758.  He  gives,  says  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  an  "odd  proof" 
of  it,  namely  that  in  1758  Reynolds  had  "150  letters"; 
certainly  this  would  be  an  odd  proof  of  prosperity ; 
but  in  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's  notes  (vol.  i.  76  n.)  the 
words  are  "150  sitters" — a  fact  which  most  portrait- 
painters  would  regard  as  a  pretty  good  proof  of 
prosperity. 

I  do  not  say  that  all  Mr.  Fitzgerald's  criticisms  are 
of  this  kind.  He  has  discovered  some  real  mistakes. 
The  man  who  should  publish  ten  volumes,  elaborately 
annotated,  without  a  mistake  would  be  a  wonder, 
and  Mr.  Fitzgerald  is  well  qualified  to  find  them. 


Johnsoniana  137 

But  I  confess  that  to  my  mind  the  number  discovered 
is  so  small  as  to  confirm  my  belief  in  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's 
general  accuracy;  and,  in  any  case,  Mr.  Fitzgerald  has 
made  too  many  slips  to  allow  us  to  accept  his  opinion 
without  careful  examination.  On  some  other  points, 
I  admit  that  Mr.  Fitzgerald  has  a  stronger  case. 
I  could  not  in  any  short  space  give  my  reasons  for 
disputing  many  even  of  his  more  plausible  remarks; 
but  he  has,  no  doubt,  pointed  to  a  weakness  in  the 
edition.  The  simple  truth  is,  I  take  it,  that  Dr. 
Birkbeck  Hill  has  ridden  his  hobby  rather  too  hard. 
He  has  sometimes  indulged  in  real  irrelevance;  re- 
marks have  occurred  to  him  which  he  has  inserted 
too  hastily,  and  which  he  might  have  expunged  on  a 
more  careful  consideration  of  the  text;  he  has  made 
some  wrong  identifications;  and  has  been  led  by 
associations,  not  shared  by  most  of  his  readers,  to 
expatiate  here  and  there  on  needless  topics.  All  this 
is  the  weakness  of  an  enthusiast,  and  of  a  commen- 
tator who  sometimes  is  over-eager  to  say  something 
when  there  is  nothing  to  be  said;  or  to  discover  diffi- 
culties which  do  not  really  exist.  But,  to  my  mind, 
the  enthusiasm  had  also  had  invaluable  results;  it 
has  given  us  an  edition  in  which  almost  everything 
is  to  be  found,  though  mixed  with  some  superfluities. 
I  wish  that  Mr.  Fitzgerald  had  recognised  this  more 
warmly,  and  that  all  true  lovers  of  Johnson  and 
Boswell,  to  which  class  he  undoubtedly  belongs,  could 
take  advantage  of  what  is  good  in  each  other's  labours 
without  being  too  anxious  to  dwell  upon  immaterial 
shortcomings. 


Gibbon's    Autobiography 

WE  are  all  grateful  to  Lord  Sheffield  for  the 
publication  of  the  original  documents  out 
of  which  Gibbon's  Memoirs  of  my  Life  and  Writings 
was  constructed.  It  is  curious  to  see  a  great  work 
in  its  early  stages,  and  the  new  matter  thus 
presented  helps  to  fill  out  and  complete  a  picture 
sufficiently  familiar  in  outline.  The  first  Lord 
Sheffield  had  indeed  done  his  work  of  editing  and 
piecing  together  so  well  that  there  is  little  that 
amounts  to  a  fresh  revelation  of  character.  The 
new  volumes  rather  justify  or  strengthen  than 
modify  in  any  sensible  degree  the  impression  of 
the  familiar  book.  Gibbon's  characteristic  good 
fortune  has  followed  him  even  now.  We  see 
that  the  temporary  suppression  of  the  documents 
was  as  right  as  their  ultimate  publication.  What 
would  once  have  been  superfluous  or  improper 
for  publication  is  now  interesting  material  for 
explaining  the  claim  of  a  classical  biography. 

All  critics  agree  that  Gibbon's  autobiography 
is  a  model  in  its  way.     Every  autobiography  is 

interesting,  even  when  it  unveils  a  mere  time- 

138 


Gibbon's  Autobiography         139 

server  and  hypocrite  like  Bubb  Dodington.  It  is 
curious  to  know  how  a  thoroughly  mean  nature 
is  justified  to  itself.  Other  memoirs,  Coleridge's 
Biographia  Literaria  for  example,  have  a  higher 
interest,  because  they  record  the  aspirations  of 
men  of  genius,  who  have  yet  wasted  half  their 
energy  through  the  caprices  of  fortune  or  mis- 
judgment  of  their  own  powers.  But  Gibbon's  has 
the  very  rare  and  peculiar  charm  of  recording 
complete  success  and  what  may  in  one  sense  be 
called  perfection  of  character.  I  do  not  mean  to 
attribute  to  Gibbon  moral  perfection  in  an  absolute 
sense.  He  had  his  little  weaknesses,  and  anybody 
who  pleases  may  expatiate  upon  them  for  our 
edification.  By  perfection  I  only  intend  perfec- 
tion relatively  to  a  given  purpose,  and  consequent- 
ly that  peculiar  balance  or  harmony  of  all  the 
faculties  which  enables  a  man  to  get  the  very 
greatest  possible  result  out  of  given  abilities. 
Moralists  may  perhaps  maintain  that  there  is 
properly  only  one  ideal.  I  will  not  argue  the 
point.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  may  also  say 
that  there  are  many  moral  types,  each  of  which 
has  its  value,  and  may  play  a  useful  part  in  the 
whole  order  of  society.  A  career  which  is  a 
systematic  application  of  a  single  governing 
principle  has  at  least  an  aesthetic,  if  not  a  purely 
ethical,  charm.  It  represents  a  successful 


140         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

experiment  worth  noting  in  the  great  art  of  life. 
The  subject  may  not  be  a  saint  or  a  hero — Gibbon 
certainly  was  neither — but  under  some  conditions 
he  may  achieve  results  of  which  the  saint  and  hero 
would  be  incapable.  We  may  prefer  Chatham 
or  Clive  or  Wesley  to  Gibbon;  but  if  he  had 
followed  any  of  their  examples,  we  should  have 
lost  something  which  the  whole  generation  could 
not  have  supplied  without  him.  The  course  of 
intellectual  development  would  have  been  sensibly 
different.  Gibbon's  type,  no  doubt,  was  the 
epicurean.  Pleasure,  he  would  have  frankly 
admitted,  is  the  true  end  of  life.  But  pleasure 
to  him,  though  it  did  not  entirely  exclude  the 
grosser  elements,  and  might  occasionally  be 
sought  even  at  a  militia  mess-table,  or  in  the 
more  elegant  dissipation  at  Almack's,  included 
a  strenuous  and  ceaseless  exertion  of  the  intellect 
upon  worthy  ends.  It  included,  too,  if  not 
romantic  devotion,  yet  fidelity  in  friendship,  and 
the  hearty  enjoyment  of  the  society  of  philosophers 
and  statesmen.  A  higher  as  well  as  a  lower  strain 
of  moral  purpose  would  have  disqualified  Gibbon 
for  the  one  great  work  which  he  achieved.  Had, 
in  short,  a  superhuman  being  been  required  to  fit 
such  an  intellect  with  the  character  best  able  to 
turn  it  to  account  or  to  fit  the  character  with  the 
most  appropriate  intellect,  he  could  not  have 


Gibbon's  Autobiography        141 

devised  a  better  combination.  Comte  prefixes  to 
his  system  of  philosophy  the  motto  from  Alfred 
de  Vigny :  Qu'  est-ce  qu'  une  grande  vie?  Une 
pensee  de  la  jeunesse  extcutte  par  Z'  age  mtir. 
Judged  by  that  test,  Gibbon's  life  was  of  the 
greatest.  How  rare  is  the  realisation  of  the 
maxim  in  any  department  of  life  need  hardly  be 
said.  We  have  just  been  congratulating  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer  upon  the  conclusion  of  the  labours  of  a 
lifetime  devoted  to  a  single  purpose.  There  cannot 
I  think,  be  too  hearty  a  recognition  of  the  great 
moral  qualities  implied.  A  retrospect  of  the 
history  of  philosophy  would  show  how  few  are  the 
careers  to  be  compared  to  it.  In  poetry,  Dante  is 
of  course  the  great  instance  of  complete  achieve- 
ment; Milton  too  may  be  said  to  have  carried 
out  in  Paradise  Lost  the  purpose  of  his  youth; 
but  the  works  even  of  our  greatest  poets  are 
mainly  a  collection  of  short  flights  instead  of  a 
continuous  evolution  of  a  lifelong  scheme.  In 
history,  Gibbon's  great  book  stands  almost  alone 
in  English  literature.  The  one  British  author  of 
his  own  day  whose  work  could  in  any  department 
stand  a  comparison  in  these  qualities  was  Adam 
Smith,  whose  Wealth  of  Nations  appeared  in  the 
same  year  with  the  first  volume  of  the  Decline  and 
Fall.  That,  too,  was  the  product  of  many  years' 
concentrated  effort  upon  a  task  early  taken  up. 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 

At  the  present  day,  if  we  take  for  granted  the 
conventional  lamentations,  the  chances  of  such 
achievement  are  smaller  than  ever.  We  are,  our 
sentimentalists  complain,  too  hurried  and  jaded  by 
the  excitement  of  modern  society  to  devote  our- 
selves to  a  single  purpose.  We  "fluctuate  idly 
without  term  or  scope";  and  "each  half  lives  a 
hundred  different  lives."  Our  works  are  frag- 
mentary because  we  live  in  a  perpetual  hurry. 
We  also  suffer,  indeed,  from  the  opposite  evil. 
Modern  authors  often  contrive  to  write  books 
quite  long  enough;  and  undertake  sufficiently 
gigantic  tasks.  Unfortunately,  the  vast  accumu- 
lation of  materials  and  the  demand  for  exhaustive 
inquiry  overpower  the  conscientious  writer,  unless 
he  be  a  German  professor,  and  then  is  rather  apt 
to  extinguish  his  vivacity. 

I  am,  I  confess,  rather  suspicious  of  these 
lamentations,  but,  without  suggesting  possible 
answers  or  qualifications,  they  no  doubt  explain 
one  cause  of  the  peculiar  pleasure  of  transporting 
ourselves  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  political  revolutions  and  mechanical  in- 
ventions had  not  yet  turned  things  topsy-turvy. 
When  I  indulge  in  day-dreams,  I  take  flight  with 
the  help  of  Gibbon,  or  Boswell,  or  Horace  Walpole, 
to  that  delightful  period.  I  take  the  precaution, 
of  course,  to  be  born  the  son  of  a  prime  minister, 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          143 

or,  at  least,  within  the  charmed  circle  where 
sinecure  offices  may  be  the  reward  of  a  judicious 
choice  of  parents.  There,  methinks,  would  be 
enjoyment,  more  than  in  this  march  of  mind,  as 
well  as  more  than  in  the  state  of  nature  on  the 
islands  where  one  is  mated  with  a  squalid  savage 
There  I  can  have  philosophy  enough  to  justify 
at  once  my  self-complacency  in  my  wisdom 
and  acquiescence  in  established  abuses.  I  make 
the  grand  tour  for  a  year  or  two  on  the  Continent, 
and  find  myself  at  once  recognised  as  a  philosopher 
and  statesman,  simply  because  I  am  an  English- 
man. I  become  an  honorary  member  of  the  tacit 
cosmopolitan  association  of  philosophers,  which 
formed  Parisian  salons,  or  collected  round  Voltaire 
at  Ferney ;  I  bring  home  a  sufficient  number  of 
pictures  to  ornament  a  comfortable  villa  on  the 
banks  of  the  Thames ;  and  form  a  good  solid 
library  in  which  I  write  books  for  the  upper 
circle,  without  bothering  myself  about  the  Social 
Question  or  Bimetallism,  or  swallowing  masses  of 
newspaper  and  magazine  articles  to  keep  myself 
up  to  date.  I  belong  to  a  club  or  two  in  London 
with  Johnson  and  Charles  Fox,  the  authors  and 
the  men  of  fashion,  in  which  I  can  "fold  my  legs 
and  have  my  talk  out,"  and  actually  hear  talk 
which  is  worth  writing  down.  If  I  do  not  aspire 
to  be  one  of  the  great  triumvirate,  of  which  Gibbon 


144         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

was  proud  to  be  a  member,  I  fancy  at  least  that 
I  can  allow  my  thoughts  to  ripen  and  mellow  into 
something  as  neat  and  rounded  as  becomes  a 
fine  gentleman. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  this  plan  involves 
certain  postulates.  It  might  be  that  in  the  real 
eighteenth  century  I  should  have  turned  my 
opportunities  to  bad  account.  I  might  become 
a  mere  dilettante  or  a  mere  sensualist.  What 
is  remarkable  in  Gibbon  is  the  felicity  with  which 
his  peculiar  talents  and  temperament  fitted  in 
with  the  accidents  of  his  life,  as  though  by  a 
specially  devised  arrangement.  It  may  be  worth 
while  to  note  in  some  detail  the  curious  play  of 
external  circumstance  and  mental  and  moral  con- 
stitution which  went  to  produce  this  unique  result ; 
to  observe  how  dexterously  fortune  combined 
all  the  external  elements  which  were  necessary  to 
mould  and  direct  a  great  historian.  Much  that 
looked  like  misfortune  was  an  essential  blessing  in 
disguise;  a  fact  which  does  not  diminish  Gibbon's 
credit  for  taking  the  hints  in  the  right  way.  In 
his  own  summary  he  admits  that  he  has  "drawn 
a  high  prize  in  the  lottery  of  life."  A  cheerful 
temper,  equable  though  not  vigorous  health,  and 
a  "golden  mediocrity  of  fortune,"  are  the  chief 
advantages  which  he  enumerates.  On  the  last 
circumstance  he  makes  an  instructive  comment 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          145 

elsewhere.  Wretched,  he  says,  is  the  work  of  the 
man  whose  daily  diligence  has  to  be  stimulated 
by  daily  hunger.  The  author  of  the  splendid 
eulogium  upon  Fielding,  the  friend  of  Goldsmith 
and  associate  of  Johnson,  should  perhaps  have 
admitted  that  poverty  was  not  of  necessity  para- 
lysing. Yet  it  is  true  that  no  denizen  of  Grub 
Street  could  have  produced  such  a  work  as  the 
Decline  and  Fall,  and  that  with  Gibbon's  delicacy 
of  constitution  life  in  that  region  would  have  been 
ruinous.  A  combination  of  wide  research  and 
leisurely  reduction  of  chaotic  materials  into  a  well- 
ordered  whole  would  have  been  impossible  for  him 
with  a  printer's  devil  always  round  the  corner. 
Had  he  had  greater  wealth,  on  the  other  hand — 
had  his  grandfather  not  been  ruined  by  the  South 
Sea  speculation,  or  his  father  been  capable  of 
retrieving  instead  of  damaging  his  fortunes — 
Gibbon  would  have  been  exposed  to  possibly  fatal 
temptations.  He  might  have  dissipated  his 
powers,  and  become  a  luxurious  "virtuoso,"  like 
Horace  Walpole ;  and  he  still  more  probably  might 
have  been  swept  into  the  political  vortex,  the 
temptations  of  which,  as  it  was,  were  almost 
fatal  to  the  conclusion  of  the  History.  The  class, 
again,  to  which  he  belonged  was,  with  all  its  faults, 
accessible  to  the  culture  of  the  time;  and  had 
some  excuse  for  considering  itself  to  be  leading 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  van  of  European  civilisation.  England  was 
still  held  on  the  Continent  to  be  the  model  land  of 
political  and  religious  freedom;  and  the  French 
philosophers  who  ruled  the  world  of  thought  were 
still  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Locke  and  Newton.  It 
is  true  that  the  education  which  a  young  Briton 
received  was  not  exactly  calculated  to  produce 
philosophers.  Gibbon  observes  that  "a  finished 
scholar  may  emerge  from  the  head  of  Westminster 
or  Eton  in  total  ignorance  of  the  business  and 
conversation  of  English  gentlemen"  of  the  period. 
All  that  was  positively  done  was  to  instil  a  little 
grammar,  at  the  expense  of  "  many  tears  and  some 
blood."  A  lad  of  spirit  got  some  useful  know- 
ledge, as  Gibbon  thinks,  and  some,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  by  no  means  useful,  from  the  rough 
freedom  of  the  public  schools.  Gibbon's  delicacy 
forced  him  to  supplement  his  grammatical  studies, 
not  by  boxing  or  cricket,  but  by  reading.  The 
grammar  at  least  taught  a  thoughtful  lad  the  value 
of  accurate  knowledge  within  a  very  narrow  sphere. 
Meanwhile,  at  twelve  he  knew  Pope's  Homer  and 
The  Arabian  Nights  by  heart;  and  at  fourteen 
the  future  historian  was  already  swallowing  "  crude 
lumps"  of  Speed,  Rapin,  and  many  standard 
works  on  history  and  travel.  He  tells  us  how,  at 
that  period,  he  was  "immersed  in  the  passage  of 
the  Goths  over  the  Danube"  when  the  dinner- 


Gibbon's  Autobiography         147 

bell  dragged  him  from  his  intellectual  feast.  By 
the  age  of  sixteen  he  had  "exhausted  all  that 
could  be  learned  in  English  of  the  Arabs  and 
Persians,  the  Tartars  and  the  Turks";  he  was 
"guessing  at  the  French  of  d'  Herbelot  and  con- 
struing the  barbarous  Latin  of  Pocock's  Abul- 
faragius."  A  neglect  which  might  have  been  fatal 
to  others  was  just  what  Gibbon  required;  and  the 
incapacity  of  his  schoolmasters  was  one  of  the 
first  fortunate  elements  in  his  surroundings.  It 
gives  one  a  pang  to  think  of  the  probable  fate  of 
a  modern  Gibbon.  Even  ill-health  would  hardly 
save  him  from  the  clutches  of  the  crammer;  or 
prevent  so  promising  a  victim  from  being  forced 
upon  the  reflection  that  a  knowledge  of  Turks 
and  Tartars  would  not  pay  in  a  competitive 
examination. 

Feeble  health  and  the  absence  of  all  judicious 
training  had  thus  enabled  Gibbon  to  recognise, 
however  dimly,  the  career  for  which  he  was 
predestined.  At  first  sight  it  would  seem  that  the 
merits  of  Oxford  in  the  way  of  neglect  would  be 
carried  to  excess.  Even  here,  such  was  the 
singular  felicity  of  his  life,  the  result  was  exactly 
what  was  required.  What  would  have  happened 
to  Gibbon  if  the  tutor  who  "remembered  that  he 
had  a  salary  to  receive,  and  only  forgot  that  he  had 
a  duty  to  perform,"  had  put  his  memory  to  the 


148          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

proper  use?  Gibbon,  who  was  essentially  docile 
and  placid  by  temperament,  might  easily  have 
been  made  into  a  model  pedant — a  Dr.  Parr  or 
Tom  Warton  of  monstrous  erudition  and  inade- 
quate performance.  He  might  have  cherished 
a  decaying  Jacobitism  in  comfortable  common 
rooms;  and,  as  he  puts  it,  have  sunk  into  the  "fat 
slumbers  of  the  Church."  The  deliverance  came 
by  the  most  apparently  unfavourable  turn  of 
fortune.  Gibbon's  conversion  to  Catholicism  ap- 
peared in  later  life  to  himself  and  to  others  to  be  a 
mere  boyish  freak.  He  could  only  wonder  how  he 
had  ever  believed  such  nonsense.  Of  course  the 
conversion  of  a  lad  just  sixteen  was  a  superficial 
process.  His  imagination  had  not  been  swayed 
by  the  aesthetic  charm  of  the  Church,  nor  did  he 
come  as  one  wearied  by  sceptical  wanderings  and 
longing  for  spiritual  slavery.  He  was  apparently 
the  victim  of  a  single  argument,  and  convictions 
so  produced  are  easily  modified.  But  the  argu- 
ment was  also  curiously  characteristic.  The  lad 
had  been  left  to  wander  rough  in  theological  as 
other  literature,  guided  only  "by  the  dim  light 
of  his  catechism, "  and  his  omnivorous  appetite  for 
all  knowledge  was  stimulated  by  a  contemporary 
controversy.  Conyers  Middleton  was  then  making 
a  sensation  resembling  that  created  about  a  cen- 
tury afterwards  by  Essays  and  Reviews.  The  old 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          149 

deistical  movement  in  his  hands  was  becoming 
mainly  historical  instead  of  metaphysical.  It 
raised,  therefore,  the  great  problem  to  which 
Gibbon  was  substantially  to  devote  his  life. 
The  freethinker  held  that  the  Church  had  not, 
and  had  never  had,  miraculous  powers;  the 
Catholic  that  it  had  such  powers  formerly,  and 
possessed  them  still;  and  the  Protestant  that  the 
powers  had  disappeared  at  some  date  which  it  was 
rather  difficult  to  fix.  To  Gibbon  the  Protestant 
view  seemed  to  be  in  any  case  illogical.  So  it 
still  seemed  when  he  wrote  the  fifteenth  chapter  of 
his  History.  As,  however,  he  was  not  prepared  to 
give  up  the  miraculous  power  altogether,  and  as  he 
knew  enough  to  see  that  it  was  claimed  long  after 
some  of  the  Catholic  dogmas  were  current,  he 
adopted  the  Church  which  held  at  least  a  consist- 
ent position.  Of  the  logic  of  this  argument  I  say 
nothing;  but  its  power  over  Gibbon  is  one  more 
proof  that  he  was  a  heaven-born  historian.  He 
tells  us  that  his  own  memory  convinced  him  of 
the  fallacy  of  the  opinion  held  by  Johnson  and 
Reynolds  that  a  man  of  ability  could  turn  his 
powers  in  any  direction.  His  own  idiosyncrasy 
was  too  unequivocal.  A  poet  may  perhaps  be 
content  to  think  of  the  past  as  a  region  of  romance 
and  wonder;  the  born  historian  is  one  who  feels 
instinctively  that  the  men  of  old  were  governed  by 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  laws  which  are  operative  now;  he  takes  for 
granted,  though  unconsciously,  the  great  doctrine 
of  the  continuity  of  history.  Both  the  consumma- 
tion and  the  start  of  Gibbon's  career  represented 
this  instinctive  conviction.  He  was  already  not 
only  reading  ecclesiastical  history,  but  reading  it 
as  a  record  of  real  events,  not  as  a  mere  com- 
pendium of  dates  and  names.  His  great  work  was 
to  bridge  the  interval  between  ancient  and  modern 
history ;  and  his  boyish  understanding  had  already 
been  impressed  by  the  identity  of  the  great 
institution  which  connects  the  two  periods. 

The  most  fortunate,  perhaps,  of  all  the  turns 
of  fate  now  followed.  Gibbon's  father  was  ap- 
parently not  a  great  philosopher  nor  a  very  wise 
man ;  but  he  took,  by  a  kind  of  dumb  instinct,  or 
through  occult  influence  of  the  son's  presiding 
star,  the  very  best  course  that  could  have  been 
taken.  Gibbon's  exile  to  Lausanne  was  meant 
to  break  off  his  old  connections.  It  succeeded, 
and  it  placed  him  in  a  frugal  and  industrious 
circle,  with  no  such  distractions  as  tempted 
luxurious  youths  at  Oxford.  He  could  fairly 
devote  his  whole  time  to  intellectual  employment. 
The  father  had  counted,  apparently,  upon  the 
dialectical  skill  of  the  Swiss  tutor.  The  "inter- 
mixture of  sects"  had,  as  Gibbon  remarks,  made 
the  Swiss  clergy  acute  controversialists,  and  the 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          151 

worthy  Pavillard  pointed  out  to  him  the  errors 
of  the  Church  of  Rome,  proved  that  it  could 
derive  no  authority  from  St.  Peter,  and  that 
"  transubstantion "  (as  Gibbon  calls  it)  was  a 
modern  fiction.  This  may  have  been  all  very 
well;  but  Pavillard,  spite  of  a  little  vanity,  was 
also  a  man  of  excellent  sense,  and  saw  that  the 
true  remedy  was  to  stimulate  Gibbon  to  reflect 
for  himself,  without  obtrusively  guiding  his 
thoughts.  Gibbon  expresses  his  wonder  that  no 
Catholic  priest  had  been  told  off  to  keep  the 
young  convert  from  deserting  the  fold.  He 
might  have  been  induced  to  make  constancy  to 
his  creed  a  point  of  honour.  Fortunately,  he  had 
been  touched  by  a  more  stimulating  influence. 
The  clergy  of  the  Pays-de-Vaud  had,  as  Gibbon 
says,  become  liberal  under  the  influence  of 
Crousaz,  known  to  Englishmen  chiefly  as  the 
assailant  of  Pope,  a  ponderous  writer  upon  logic 
and  a  disciple  of  Locke.  Gibbon  read  Crousaz's 
logic  and  Locke's  essay,  and  imbibed  ideas  un- 
known to,  or  dreaded  by,  the  Jacobite  dons  at 
Oxford.  At  Lausanne,  moreover,  he  had  the 
honour  of  introduction  to  the  great  Voltaire. 
Voltaire,  indeed,  appeared  to  him  chiefly  in 
the  character  of  dramatist  and  actor.  Gibbon 
speaks  with  moderate  enthusiasm  of  a  man  who, 
considered  as  a  historian,  necessarily  seemed 


i52          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

superficial  and  inaccurate  to  his  critic.  The  names 
thus  mentioned  are  enough  tg  suggest  what  had 
really  happened.  Gibbon  had  ceased,  as  he  tells 
us,  to  be  an  Englishman.  French  had  become 
more  natural  to  him  than  his  own  language;  and 
his  friends  held  that  he  had  suffered  "a  serious 
and  irreparable"  mischief.  Gibbon  had,  however, 
become  not  a  Swiss  nor  a  Frenchman,  but  a 
cosmopolitan.  He  had  been  initiated  into  the 
freemasonry  of  the  most  enlightened  circles  of 
Europe.  "Whatever  have  been  the  fruits  of  his 
education,"  he  says,  they  "must  be  ascribed"  to 
his  "fortunate  banishment."  Instead  of  being 
"  steeped  in  port  and  prejudice  among  the  monks 
of  Oxford,"  he  had  breathed  a  larger  air  and  had 
become  familiar  with  the  thoughts  which  were 
shaking  the  whole  intellectual  fabric  of  the  time. 
He  could  look  at  history,  not  from  an  insular  point 
of  view,  or  in  the  interests  of  some  narrow  set  of 
dogmas,  but  from  the  widest  philosophical  stand- 
ing-ground of  the  period.  For  the  present,  indeed, 
history  seems  to  have  been  rather  in  the  back- 
ground. He  threw  himself  upon  classical  litera- 
ture with  an  appetite  which  never  failed  him  in 
later  years.  He  read  the  great  authors,  though 
his  Greek  still  remained  imperfect;  not  for  any 
narrow  purpose,  but  as  one  who  is  to  make  them 
bosom  companions  for  life.  Cicero's  writings  first 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          153 

fascinated  him,  and  he  read  not  only  to  appreciate 
the  style,  but  for  the  "admirable  lessons"  of 
conduct  "applicable  to  almost  every  situation  of 
public  and  private  life."  Then,  in  twenty-seven 
months,  he  read  through  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
Latin  classics:  and,  what  is  characteristic,  his 
review  "though  rapid  was  neither  hasty  nor 
superficial."  He  made  abstracts,  worked  hard  at 
difficult  passages,  and  followed  out  every  subsid- 
iary line  of  inquiry  which  suggested  itself.  He 
tells  us  at  a  later  time  how,  before  reading  a  new 
book,  he  took  a  solitary  walk  and  reflected  care- 
fully upon  the  state  of  his  knowledge,  that  he 
might  judge  what  benefit  he  received  from  his 
author.  So  he  prepared  himself  afterwards  for  his 
Italian  journey,  not  by  buying  a  Murray's  hand- 
book— the  reason  is  obvious  but  by  writing  a  hand- 
book for  himself,  in  which  were  collected  all  the 
classical  passages  bearing  upon  the  geography  of 
the  country.  To  have  all  your  existing  knowledge 
well  arranged  and  thoroughly  in  hand  was,  he  felt, 
the  best  way  to  add  to  it.  Omnivorous  reader  as  he 
was,  he  accepts  the  principle  non  multa,  sed  multum, 
and  made  his  ground  sure  at  every  step.  In  other 
words,  he  had  the  true  scholar's  instinct,  but  duly 
controlled  by  the  philosophic  turn  for  meditation 
upon  general  principles.  He  would  indulge  in 
minute  researches,  but  would  never  lose  himself  in 


154  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  multiplicity  of  details.  His  mode  of  writing 
shows  the  same  perception.  He  used,  as  he  tells 
us,  to  "cast  a  long  paragraph  in  a  single  mould," 
to  "  try  it  by  his  ear, "  and  to  "  suspend  the  action 
of  the  pen  till  he  had  given  the  last  polish  to  his 
work."  Most  of  us,  I  fear,  think  that  we  have 
done  enough  when  we  begin  a  single  sentence  with 
an  approximate  guess  at  the  way  of  getting  out 
of  it.  The  man  who  composes  by  paragraphs 
will  also  frame  his  chapters  with  a  view  to  their 
position  in  an  organic  whole.  The  philosophy 
into  which  Gibbon  was  initiated  was  congenial  to 
his  method.  The  great  writers  of  the  day  asked, 
above  all  things,  for  good,  sweeping  formulae,  and 
they  preferred  such  as  could  be  packed  into  an 
epigram.  The  French  influence,  as  Mr.  Cotter 
Morison  remarks,  was  especially  valuable.  A 
Frenchman,  whatever  his  faults,  always  recognises 
the  truth,  too  often  forgotten  elsewhere,  that  every 
chapter  of  a  book  should  be  written  with  reference 
to  the  whole.  There  should  be  a  central,  animat- 
ing idea.  Gibbon's  own  view  is  indicated  in  his 
very  interesting  though  crude  French  essay  on  the 
study  of  literature,  written  (1758-59)  at  the 
beginning  of  his  literary  career.  It  was  intended 
to  defend  the  doctrine — less  needed,  one  might 
have  supposed,  then  than  now — that  literature 
should  not  be  dethroned  by  the  mathematical  and 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          155 

physical  sciences.  But  he  argues  that  a  true 
appreciation  of  literature  demands  wide  knowledge 
and  thorough  study.  He  insists  upon  the  close 
connection  of  all  branches  of  knowledge,  and 
declares  that  if  a  philosopher  is  not  always  a 
historian,  a  historian-  should  always  be  a  philo- 
sopher. He  should  be  tracing  the  operation  of 
general  causes.  He  should  deal  with  apparent 
trifles;  not  out  of  mere  curiosity  or  love  of  the 
picturesque,  but  because  they  are  often  the  clearest 
indications  of  principles  of  wide  application.  He 
should  inquire,  for  example,  into  the  origin  of 
grotesque  mythologies,  and  might  even,  as  he 
points  out,  find  valuable  hints  in  the  moral 
notions  of  an  "Iroquois."  Though  ill-arranged 
and  disjointed,  the  essay  thus  shows  keen  glimpses 
into  methods  which  have  since  assumed  greater 
importance. 

So  far,  fate,  acting  upon  Gibbon's  idiosyncrasies, 
had  prepared  him  for  his  great  work.  But  his 
presiding  genius  had  still  to  guard  against  various 
dangers.  Gibbon  might  have  rivalled  the  erudi- 
tion of  a  German  professor,  and  polished  it  with 
some  of  the  skill  of  a  French  literary  artist.  But 
the  historian  wants  something  more :  the  infusion 
of  practical  instinct  which  comes  from  familiarity 
with  actual  affairs,  and  should  give  reality  to  his 
narrative.  Gibbon  was  in  a  fair  way  to  become  a 


156  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

"  book  in  breeches  " ;  his  detachment  from  his  own 
country  had  made  him  cosmopolitan,  but  it  had 
left  him  a  secluded  student.  He  had  formed  his 
lifelong  and  invaluable  friendship  with  Deyverdun, 
one  of  those  rare  and  delightful  associations  which 
are  only  formed  in  youth  and  by  close  community 
of  intellectual  tastes.  But  Deyverdun  "hung 
loose  upon  society";  he  and  his  friend  aspired 
to  be  members  of  the  literary  world  of  Europe — 
but  only  as  authors  of  a  learned  journal.  They 
had  no  points  of  contact  with  business.  How 
was  Gibbon  to  be  brought  into  contact  with  the 
real  world,  the  world  of  passion  and  active 
interests,  in  which  literature  is  a  mere  surface 
phenomenon,  and  yet  to  be  initiated  without 
being  absorbed?  That  represents  a  delicate  pro- 
blem which  his  fortune  solved  with  singular 
felicity. 

In  the  first  place,  of  course,  Gibbon  must  have 
the  great  experience  of  falling  in  love.  It  must 
be  a  passion  strong  and  exalted  enough  to  let  him 
into  the  great  secret  of  human  happiness,  and  yet 
it  must  not  be  such  as  to  entangle  him  too  deeply 
in  the  active  duties  of  life.  A  man  who  has  never 
been  stirred  to  such  passion  must  look  too  much 
from  outside  upon  the  great  drama  of  life;  and 
yet  the  passion,  if  sufficiently  powerful,  may  lead 
him  too  far  from  his  predestined  functions.  Mile. 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          157 

Curchod  was  the  appointed  instrument  of  fate  for 
solving  this  problem.  She  was  beautiful  and  in- 
telligent enough  to  rouse  Gibbon  to  an  apparently 
genuine  devotion ;  and  yet  as  she  was  a  foreigner, 
without  a  penny,  it  was  quite  clear  that  the  elder 
Gibbon  would  never  take  her  for  a  daughter-in- 
law.  The  famous  "  sighed  as  a  lover  and  obeyed 
as  a  son"  sums  up  the  situation  so  far  as  Gibbon 
was  concerned.  It  must,  I  fear,  be  granted  that 
Gibbon  did  not  behave  very  prettily,  and  even 
leaves  us  with  a  vague  impression  that,  if  the 
paternal  interdict  had  been  wanting,  some  other 
obstacle  would  have  turned  up  at  the  last  moment. 
Modern  readers  will  probably  agree  with  Rous- 
seau's judgment  of  the  case.  Rousseau  pitied 
poor  Susanne,  but  thought  that  Gibbon  had  shown 
himself  unworthy  of  her,  and  would  only  have 
made  her  "rich  and  miserable"  in  England.  As 
Mile.  Curchod  soon  became  Mme.  Necker,  and 
forgave  the  lover  who  had  jilted  her,  we  may 
forgive  a  misdoing  which  caused  no  permanent 
misery.  This  passing  collocation  of  the  two  great 
men,  the  sentimentalist  who  represents  the  passion, 
and  the  calm,  not  to  say  cynical,  historian  who 
represents  the  reflection  of  the  period,  is  curiously 
characteristic ;  and  I  leave  the  ethical  question  to 
be  settled  by  my  readers.  Perhaps  Gibbon  was 
not  of  the  finest  human  clay;  but  the  problem, 


i58          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

I  repeat,  was  not  how  to  make  a  perfect  man,  but 
how  to  make  a  great  historian.  Had  Gibbon 
become  a  husband  there  can  be  little  doubt  as 
to  the  material  consequences.  He  had  difficulties 
enough  in  keeping  up  a  bachelor  establishment; 
and  with  a  wife  by  his  side,  he  would  have  been 
forced  to  accept  an  appointment — such  as  he 
actually  contemplated — in  the  Excise,  and  to 
labour  five  days  a  week  in  official  routine.  Julian 
and  Athanasius  and  Justinian  must  have  waited 
to  be  appreciated  by  somebody  else.  The  effect 
upon  Gibbon's  character  was  exactly  what  was 
wanted  from  the  same  point  of  view.  He  made 
up  his  mind  soon  afterwards,  as  appears  from  his 
letters  to  his  father,  that  he  should  never  marry. 
He  was  to  be  henceforth  in  that  attitude  of  "de- 
tachment" which  constitutes  the  true  historical 
frame  of  mind — an  interested  looker-on,  not  an 
active  performer,  in  the  great  tragi-comedy.  It 
may,  perhaps,  be  suggested — with  too  much 
plausibility — that  the  tone  in  which  Gibbon 
generally  refers  to  love  affairs  in  his  history  is  not 
altogether  edifying,  and  hardly  implies  that  his 
passion  had  purified  or  ennobled  his  mind.  The 
best  arrangements  will  not  work  quite  perfectly. 
In  any  case,  however,  though  Gibbon  for  sufficient 
reasons  treats  the  matter  rather  lightly,  he  had,  as 
he  intimates,  gone  through  one  of  the  painful 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          159 

crises  which  form  epochs  in  the  development  of 
character.  He  was  certainly  not  soured  as  some 
men  have  been,  but  he  henceforward  cultivated 
affections  of  a  more  tepid  kind.  No  man,  it  must 
be  always  remembered,  was  a  more  thoroughly 
faithful  friend;  he  showed  very  unusual  gener- 
osity and  good-feeling  to  his  father,  his  step- 
mother, and  the  aunt  who  had  protected  his 
childhood.  It  is  impossible,  for  example,  without 
a  very  warm  feeling  of  posthumous  regard,  to  read 
his  letter  to  Lord  Sheffield  upon  Lady  Sheffield's 
death,  and  to  remember  how  the  gouty  and  pre- 
posterously fat  old  gentleman  (old  in  constitution 
though  not  in  years)  bundled  himself  into  his 
carriage,  and  set  off  to  travel  through  the  midst 
of  armies  to  bring  such  solace  to  his  friend  as 
was  possible.  Meanwhile,  he  had  been  taught  by 
a  sharp  enough  lesson  to  know  himself.  He 
was  not  suited  to  come  upon  the  stage  as  a  Romeo, 
and  must  be  content  to  play  Horatio,  a  good, 
honest  friend  of  more  romantic  and  passionate 
characters.  Henceforward  it  was  to  be  his  destiny 
to  renounce  the  stronger  impulses,  and  to  devote 
himself  in  his  little  circle  of  friends  to  the  great 
work  for  which  so  many  forces  within  and  without 
had  been  moulding  him. 

Before  his  love  affair  was  over,  Gibbon  had 
been  forced  into  experience  of  a  different  kind. 


160          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

He  has  told  us  himself  how  the  captain  of  Hamp- 
shire grenadiers  was  of  some  use  to  the  historian 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  Later  critics  have  told 
us  that,  in  fact,  his  narratives  of  military  events 
show  that  he  had  profited  by  seeing  a  real  flesh- 
and-blood  army,  on  however  small  a  scale,  instead 
of  only  reading  about  armies  in  books.  Of  that 
I  am  an  incompetent  judge,  but  on  this  and  on 
his  political  career  there  is  at  least  an  obvious 
remark  to  be  made.  Gibbon  tells  us  himself 
how  his  service  in  the  militia  made  him  an  "  Eng- 
lishman and  a  soldier,"  and  how,  in  spite  of  all 
the  waste  of  time,  he  still  travelled  with  a  Horace 
"always  in  his  pocket  and  often  in  his  hand," 
and,  when  the  enforced  fast  from  literature  came 
to  an  end,  fell  upon  the  old  feast  with  sharpened 
appetite,  and  rushed  off  as  rapidly  as  he  could  to 
find  the  inspiration  for  his  great  book  in  Rome. 
In  other  words,  he  was  brought  into  close  contact 
with  actual  affairs,  and  yet  not  diverted  from  the 
true  aim  of  his  life.  The  political  career  had  the 
same  felicity.  He  found  himself  too  slow  and 
unready  to  speak,  and  was  content  to  be  a  quiet 
looker-on.  It  must,  indeed,  be  admitted  that  he 
looked  on  with  superlative  calmness.  His  political 
career,  says  Mr.  Morison,  is  the  "  side  of  his  history 
from  which  a  friendly  biographer  would  most 
readily  turn  away."  "I  went  into  Parliament," 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          161 

he  says  himself,  "without  patriotism  and  without 
ambition,  and  all  my  views  tended  to  the  con- 
venient and  respectable  place  of  a  lord  of  trade." 
That,  certainly,  is  not  an  exalted  view.  Moreover, 
Gibbon's  way  of  referring  to  contemporary  events 
shows  apparent  levity  and  even  want  of  penetra- 
tion. He  is  less  sagacious  than  Horace  Walpole, 
whose  extraordinary  cleverness  was  wasted  by 
frivolity.  As  an  outside  observer,  he  might  have 
recognised  the  importance  of  the  great  issues,  and 
shown  himself  at  least  on  a  level  with  the  higher 
judges  of  his  own  time.  He  was  apparently 
conscious  of  the  gross  blunders  of  George  III. 
and  Lord  North,  but  was  content  to  support 
Ministers,  with  a  lazy  indifference  to  the  result. 
His  letters,  when  they  contain  any  reference  to 
the  American  War,  treat  the  matter  almost  as  a 
jest,  and  plainly  betray  that  his  real  interest  was 
much  more  with  Alaric  than  with  Washington. 
He  lived  through  the  most  exciting  period  of 
the  century;  he  even  took  an  actual,  though  a 
very  subordinate,  part  in  the  operations  which 
involved  the  foundation  of  the  British  Empire  in 
the  East  and  the  expulsion  of  our  rivals  from 
the  West.  He  supported  the  political  course 
which  led  to  the  separation  of  our  greatest  colo- 
nies a  few  years  later;  and  both  at  these  periods 
and  on  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution 


VOL.  I.— II. 


1 62          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

afterwards,  he  seems  to  have  regarded  the  greatest 
events  of  the  time  chiefly  as  they  affected  the 
comfort  of  a  fat  historian  in  his  library.  What 
defence  can  be  made?  None  truly,  if  we  are 
measuring  Gibbon  by  a  lofty  moral  standard; 
but  if  we  are  asking  the  question  now  under 
consideration,  how  a  great  historian  was  to  be 
turned  out,  we  shall  have  to  make  a  very  different 
judgment. 

The  obvious  reproach  is  summed  up  by  the 
statement  that  Gibbon  was  a  cynic.  The  name 
suggests  the  selfish  indifference  to  human  welfare 
which  permits  a  man  to  treat  politics  simply  as  a 
game  played  for  the  stakes  of  place  and  pension. 
It  is  generally  added,  though  I  hardly  know 
whether  it  is  regarded  by  way  of  apology,  or  as 
a  proof  of  the  offence,  that  all  our  great-grand- 
fathers were  corrupt  borough-mongers,  forming 
cliques  for  the  distribution  of  plunder,  and  caring 
nothing  for  the  welfare  of  the  people.  We 
ought,  we  are  often  told,  to  judge  a  man  by 
the  standard  of  his  period.  Whatever  the  period, 
it  can  always  be  plausibly  added  that  it  was  the 
most  immorai  period  ever  known  in  history. 
The  argument  is  familiar,  and  I  cannot  attempt 
to  consider  its  precise  application  here.  But  I 
may  try  briefly  to  indicate  how  it  would  have 
struck  Gibbon.  What  would  he  have  said  if  he 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          163 

could  have  foreseen  the  judgment  of  the  coming 
generation?    You  call  me  a  cynic,  he  might  have 
replied,  but  at  least  you  must  admit  that  I  was  an 
honest  cynic;   I   never   professed   to  believe  in 
humbug,   though   I   had   to  accept  it.     If  you 
are  less  cynical,  you  have  made  up  for  it  by 
being    more    hypocritical.     Our    party    politics 
meant  adherence  to  some  little  aristocratic  ring. 
Yours  mean  servility  to  a  caucus.     You  cover  a 
real  cynicism  as  deep  as  mine  by  shouting  with 
the  largest  mob.     We  at  least  dared  to  despise 
a   demagogue;  you  dare  not  openly  deny  his 
inspiration.     You   manage   to   use   fine   phrases 
so  as  to  cover  the  desertion  of  all  your  principles ; 
you  use  old  war-cries  in  favour  of  the  very  doctrines 
which  you  used  to  condemn,  and  declare  all  the 
time  that  you  are  impelled  by  "enthusiasm"  and 
sensibility  to  the  voice  of  the  people.     Is  it  not 
rather  subservience  to  their  narrowest  prejudices? 
In  my  day,  he  would  add,  we  had  examples  of  the 
genuine  demagogue  revealing  himself  without  a 
blush.     When   in   the   militia,    in    1762,    I   saw 
Colonel  Wilkes,   the  best  of  companions,  at   a 
drunken  dinner,  full  of  blasphemy  and  indecency, 
glorying  in  his  profligacy,  and  openly  declaring 
that  he  had  resolved  to  make  his  fortune.     You 
have   found   out   that  because   he   made  it  by 
nattering  the  winning  side  he  must  have  been  a 


164          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

saint  in  disguise.  You  sneer  at  my  want  of 
"enthusiasm."  You  shudder  when  you  make  the 
remark  that  enthusiasm  was  once  actually  a  term 
of  reproach.  When  we  denounced  "enthusiasts," 
we  denounced  a  very  bad  thing.  We  thought 
that  the  false  claimants  of  supernatural  powers 
must  be  knaves  or  fools,  and  we  ventured  to  say  so 
openly.  You  think  that  even  a  charlatan  deserves 
respect  if  his  stock-in-trade  is  a  comfortable 
superstition.  I,  too,  could  claim  enthusiasm  in 
your  sense.  It  was  in  a  moment  of  "  enthusiasm" 
that  I  joined  the  Church  of  Rome;  and  though  I 
always  scorned  to  affect  what  I  did  not  feel,  it  was 
with  true  "enthusiasm"  that  I  entered  Rome, 
heard  the  bare-footed  friars  singing  vespers  in  the 
Temple  of  Jupiter,  and  conceived  the  first  crude 
idea  of  my  great  work.  Enthusiasm,  in  my 
version,  lifted  me  to  the  regions  of  philosophy,  and 
separated  me  from  the  vulgar  herd.  It  did  not 
mean  the  discovery  of  the  vox  dei  in  every  plat- 
form intended  to  catch  the  votes  of  the  majority. 
We  did  not  think  ignorance  and  poverty  a  suffi- 
cient guarantee  for  political  or  religious  infallibility. 
But  we  were  not,  therefore,  as  you  infer,  indifferent 
to  the  happiness  of  mankind.  We  thought  that 
their  happiness  was  best  secured  in  the  ages  when 
a  benevolent  despotism  maintained  peace  and 
order  throughout  the  world;  when  philosophers 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          165 

could  rule  and  the  lower  orders  be  confined  to 
the  work  for  which  they  were  really  competent. 
We  held  in  religion  pretty  much  what  you  hold, 
only  that  you  try  to  cover  your  real  meaning 
under  a  cloud  of  words.  We  accepted  my  great 
maxim :  To  the  philosopher  all  religions  are  equally 
false;  and  to  the  magistrate  equally  useful.  You 
try  to  spin  theories  which  will  combine  the  two 
opinions — which  will  allow  you  to  use  the  most 
edifying  language,  while  explaining  that  it  means 
nothing;  and  to  base  arguments  for  "faith"  on 
the  admission  that  nobody  can  possibly  know 
anything.  We  were  content  to  say  that  it  was 
too  much  honour  to  the  vulgar  to  argue  as  to  the 
truth  of  their  beliefs.  We  were  content  to  belong 
to  the  upper  circle  of  enlightenment  in  which  it 
was  understood  that  the  creeds  were  meaningless, 
but  without  attempting  the  hopeless  task  of 
enlightening  the  uncultivated  mind.  Some  such 
retort  might  be  made  to  the  nineteenth  century  by 
the  eighteenth;  and  Gibbon  is  a  typical  example 
of  the  qualities  which  were  denounced  in  the  next 
generation  when  they  called  their  immediate  pre- 
decessors cold,  heartless,  and  materialistic,  and 
looked  upon  the  whole  preceding  century  as  a 
sort  of  mysterious  intercalation,  an  eclipse  of  all 
that  was  heroic  and  romantic,  and  a  sudden 
paralysis  of  the  progressive  forces  of  humanity. 


1 66          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Nothing,  as  I  believe,  can  be  more  unjust;  but 
rightly  or  wrongly,  there  are  times  when  one 
regrets  the  reign  of  cool  common-sense  and  of 
freedom  from  fads  and  fussiness.  At  such 
moments  there  is  an  incidental  charm  about  the 
intellectual  position  of  our  grandfathers.  Philo- 
sophical problems  can  hardly  be  discussed  now 
without  suggesting  some  immediate  practical 
application.  Dogmas  have  become  explosive, 
and  suggest  at  once  a  reconstruction  of  society, 
a  revolutionary  or  a  reactionary  movement;  they 
are  caught  up  by  popular  leaders  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  and  abstract  speculations  are  made  at  once 
into  party  watchwords.  It  must  have  been 
pleasant  to  philosophise  in  the  days  when  your 
audience  was  select,  when  you  could  feel  that  your 
opinions  would  be  discussed  only  by  a  few  en- 
lightened people,  or  would  at  most  spread  grad- 
ually and  slowly  force  away  old  prejudices  without 
provoking  internecine  struggles.  You  could  boast 
of  being  a  philosopher,  and  yet  be  content  to 
allow  error  to  die  out  among  the  vulgar  without 
trying  to  force  new  ideas  upon  minds  totally 
incapable  of  appreciating  them.  To  speak  freely 
and  openly  is  no  doubt  the  best  rule  in  the  long 
run;  but  there  is,  it  must  be  admitted,  a  real 
difficulty  in  proclaiming  truth  with  the  know- 
ledge that  it  will  be  perverted  by  the  vulgar 


Gibbon's  Autobiography         167 

interpreters.  To  Gibbon,  in  his  earlier  days,  that 
difficulty  scarcely  presented  itself.  He  fancied 
that  even  his  chapters  upon  Christianity  would 
be  accepted  by  all  cultivated  people,  while  there 
should  be  a  faint  understanding  that  the  old 
language  should  still  be  kept  up  "for  the  use 
of  the  poor." 

Gibbon,  indeed,  had  in  time  to  confess  that  this 
view  involved  an  important  practical  mistake. 
Philosophy,  political  and  religious,  could  not 
permanently  remain  the  esoteric  doctrine  of  a 
narrow  circle;  and  when  hot-headed  Rousseaus 
and  the  like  spread  its  tenets  among  the  vulgar, 
it  produced  an  explosion  which  took  the  calm 
philosophers  by  surprise.  Gibbon  began  to  see 
a  good  side  even  in  the  superstition,  the  vitality  of 
which  had  astonished  him  so  much  on  the  publica- 
tion of  his  first  volume.  This  suggests  the 
obvious  weakness  of  his  position;  nor  do  I  mean 
to  adopt  the  sentiments  which  I  have  ventured  to 
attribute  to  him.  What  I  desire  to  indicate  is 
the  necessity  of  this  position  to  the  discharge  of 
his  function  as  a  historian.  We  can  no  doubt 
conceive  of  a  more  excellent  way;  of  a  great 
thinker,  who  should  at  once  be  capable  of  philo- 
sophical detachment,  of  looking  at  passing  events 
in  their  relations  to  the  vast  drama  of  human 
history  on  the  largest  scale  without  losing  his 


1 68  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

interest  in  the  history  actually  passing  under  his 
eyes.  He  might  take  not  less  but  more  interest 
in  processes  which  he  saw  to  be  the  continuation 
of  the  great  evolution  of  thought  and  society. 
But  the  phrase  indicates  the  conception  which 
was  necessarily  obscure  to  Gibbon.  To  have 
reached  that  view  would  in  his  time  have  required 
almost  superhuman  attributes.  Gibbon's  merits 
were  at  the  time  inconsistent  with  the  virtues 
of  which  we  regret  the  absence.  He  had  to 
choose,  one  may  say,  between  two  alternatives. 
If  he  were  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  politics 
of  the  day,  he  would  have  had  to  be  a  Wilkes  on 
condition  of  not  being  a  Wilkeite,  or  at  least, 
with  Burke,  to  give  up  to  party  what  was  meant 
for  mankind.  To  save  him  from  such  a  fate, 
which  would  have  been  a  hopeless  waste  of  power, 
he  required  to  be  endowed  with  an  excess  of 
indifference,  and  a  deficiency  of  close  and  spon- 
taneous sympathy  with  men  outside  of  his  little 
inner  circle.  Of  this,  I  fear,  he  cannot  be  acquitted. 
Indeed,  his  qualification  in  this  respect  went  a 
little  too  far,  for  he  appears  to  have  been  on  the 
very  point  of  accepting  a  post  which  would  have 
cut  short  the  History  half-way.  Even  his 
best  friends,  strangely  as  it  seems  to  us,  pressed 
him  to  commit  this  semi-suicide.  Here,  therefore, 
his  good  genius  had  once  more  to  interfere  by 


Gibbon's  Autobiography         169 

external  circumstances.  The  task  was  not  diffi- 
cult. A  happy  dulness  to  his  claims  was  infused 
into  the  minds  of  the  dispensers  of  patronage; 
and  Gibbon  was  compelled  to  retire  philosophically 
to  the  house  at  Lausanne,  where  in  due  time 
he  was  to  take  the  famous  stroll  in  the  covered 
walk  of  acacias  which,  on  June  27, 1787,  succeeded 
the  completion  of  the  "last  lines  of  the  last  page," 
of  his  unique  achievement. 

We  see  how  strangely  Gibbon  had  been  fitted 
for  his  task;  how  fate  had  first  turned  him  out 
of  the  quiet  grooves  down  which  he  might  have 
spun  to  obscurity,  and  then  applied  the  goad 
judiciously  whenever  he  tried  to  bolt  from  the 
predestined  course.  The  task  itself  was  obviously 
demanded  by  the  conditions  of  the  time,  and  its 
importance  recognised  by  other,  and  in  some 
respects  acuter  or  more  powerful,  intellects. 
History  was  to  emerge  from  the  stage  of  mere 
personal  memoirs  and  antiquarian  annals.  A 
survey  from  a  higher  point  of  view  was  wanted: 
a  general  map  or  panoramic  view  of  the  great 
field  of  human  progress  must  be  laid  down  as 
preparatory  to  further  progress.  Such  men  as 
Hume  and  Voltaire,  for  instance,  had  clearly  seen 
the  need,  and  had  endeavoured  in  their  way  to 
supply  it.  Gibbon's  superiority  was,  of  course, 
due  in  the  first  place  to  the  high  standard  of 


1 70          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

accuracy  and  research  which  has  enabled  his  work 
to  stand  all  the  tests  applied  by  later  critics. 
His  instinctive  perception  of  this  necessity, 
combined  with  the  intellectual  courage  implied 
in  his  choice  of  so  grand  a  subject,  enabled  him 
to  combine  width  of  view  and  fulness  of  detail 
with  unsurpassed  felicity.  All  this  is  unani- 
mously granted.  But  other  qualities  were  equally 
required,  though  from  a  later  point  of  view  they 
account  rather  for  the  limitations  than  the  suc- 
cesses of  his  work.  There  must  be  a  division 
of  labour  between  generations  as  well  as  between 
individuals.  Kepler  had  to  describe  the  actual 
movements  of  the  planets  before  Newton  could 
determine  the  nature  of  the  forces  implied  by 
the  movements.  In  Gibbon's  generation  it  was 
necessary  to  describe  the  evolutions  of  the  puppets 
which  move  across  the  stage  of  history.  His 
successors  could  then,  and  not  till  then,  attempt 
to  show  what  were  the  hidden  strings  that  moved 
them.  Gibbon,  it  has  been  said,  "adheres  to  the 
obvious  surface  of  events,  with  little  attempt  to 
place  them  beneath  the  deeper  sky  of  social 
evolution."  He  appreciates,  it  is  suggested, 
neither  the  great  spiritual  forces  nor  the  economic 
conditions  which  lie  beneath  the  surface.  He 
calmly  surveys  the  great  stream  of  history,  its 
mingling  currents  and  deluges  and  regurgitations, 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          171 

the  struggles  of  priests  and  warriors  and  legis- 
lators, without  suggesting  any  adequate  concep- 
tions of  what  is  called  the  social  dynamics  implied. 
To  him  history  appears  to  be  simply  a  "register 
of  the  crimes,  follies,  and  misfortunes  of  man- 
kind. ' '  The  criticism,  taking  its  truth  for  granted, 
amounts  to  saying  that  Gibbon  had  only  gone  as 
far  as  was  in  his  time  possible.  He  must  be 
philosopher  enough  to  sympathise  with  the  great 
intellectual  movement  of  his  time.  Otherwise 
he  could  not  have  risen  above  the  atmosphere 
of  Oxford  common-rooms,  and  could  only  have 
written  annals  or  narratives  on  one  side  or  the 
other  of  some  forgotten  apologetic  thesis.  But 
had  the  philosophic  taste  predominated,  had 
his  passions  and  his  sympathies  been  more  fervid, 
he  must  have  fallen  into  the  fallacies  of  his  time. 
The  enthusiastic  or  militant  philosopher  was,  as  I 
certainly  think,  doing  an  inestimable  service  in 
attacking  superstition  and  bigotry.  But  he  was 
thereby  disqualified  as  a  writer  not  only  of  philo- 
sophical history,  but  even  of  such  a  record  of  facts 
as  would  serve  for  later  historians.  Such  a  man 
as  d'Alembert  was  inclined  to  wish  that  history 
in  general  could  be  wiped  out  of  human  memory. 
From  the  point  of  view  characteristic  of  the 
eighteenth-century  philosophers,  history  could  be 
nothing  but  a  record  of  the  tyranny  of  kings  and 


172          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

the  imposture  of  priests.  Voltaire's  Essai  sur  les 
Mceurs  is  delightful  reading,  but  a  caricature  of 
history.  Gibbon  might  sympathise  with  this 
sentiment  so  far  as  to  look  with  calm  impartiality 
upon  all  forms  of  faith  and  government,  but  not 
so  far  as  to  pervert  his  History  into  a  series  of  party 
pamphlets.  To  him  the  American  War,  or 
the  early  democratic  movements  in  England, 
were  simply  incidents  in  his  great  panorama ;  like 
the  rise  of  the  Christian  Church,  or  the  barbarian 
Moslems  or  the  Crusades,  they  were  eddies  in  the 
great  confused  gulf-stream  of  humanity.  He 
could  not  believe  in  a  sudden  revelation  of  Reason, 
or  the  advent  of  a  new  millennium  any  more 
than  in  the  second  coming  anticipated  by  the 
early  Christians.  To  condemn  his  coldness  may 
be  right ;  but  it  is  to  condemn  him  for  taking  the 
only  point  of  view  from  which  his  task  could  be 
achieved.  He  was  philosopher  enough  to  be 
impartial,  not  enough  to  be  subject  to  the 
illusions,  useful  illusions  possibly,  of  a  sudden 
regeneration  of  mankind  by  philosophy.  His 
political  position  was  the  necessary  comple- 
ment of  his  historical  position.  A  later  philo- 
sophy may  have  taught  us  how  to  see  a  process 
of  evolution,  a  gradual  working-out  of  great 
problems,  even  in  the  blind,  instinctive  aspirations 
and  crude  faiths  of  earlier  ages.  At  Gibbon's 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          173 

time,  he  had  to  choose  between  rejecting  them 
in  the  mass  as  mere  encumbrances  or  renouncing 
them  altogether.  That  is,  to  admit  that  the  one 
point  of  view  which  makes  a  reasonable  estimate 
possible  was  practically  excluded.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  historical  instinct  forced  him  at  last 
to  set  forth  the  material  facts  both  impartially 
and  so  grouped  and  related  as  to  bring  out  the 
great  issues.  It  is  easy  now  both  for  positivists 
and  believers  to  show,  for  example,  that  his 
account  of  the  origins  of  Christianity  was  entirely 
insufficient.  He  explains,  as  has  been  remarked, 
the  success  of  the  Church  by  the  zeal  of  the  early 
disciples,  and  forgets  to  explain  how  they  came 
to  be  zealous.  Undoubtedly  that  is  an  omission 
of  importance.  What,  however,  Gibbon  did  was 
not  the  less  effectively  to  bring  out  the  real 
conditions  of  any  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
greatest  of  historical  problems.  Newman  observed 
how  in  a  later  period,  "Athanasius  stands  out 
more  grandly  in  Gibbon  than  in  the  pages  of 
the  orthodox  ecclesiastical  historians."  That  is 
because  he  places  all  events  in  their  true  historical 
setting.  In  the  writings  of  the  apologists  of  the 
time,  the  spread  of  Christianity  was  treated  as 
though  converts  had  been  made  by  producing 
satisfactory  evidence  of  miracles  in  a  court  of 
justice.  Gibbon's  famous  chapters,  however 


1 74          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

inadequate,  showed  at  least  that  the  development 
of  the  new  creed  required  for  its  expansion  a 
calm  consideration  of  all  the  multitudinous  forces 
that  go  to  building  up  a  great  ecclesiastical 
hierarchy,  and  a  testing  by  careful  examination  of 
all  the  entries  about  saints  and  martyrs  which 
flowed  so  easily  from  the  pens  of  enthusiastic 
historians.  That  his  judgment  should  be  final  or 
even  coherent  was  impossible;  but  it  was  an 
essential  step  towards  any  such  judgment  as 
could  pass  muster  with  a  historian  equipped  with 
the  results  of  later  thought  and  inquiry. 

Upon  this,  however,  it  would  be  idle  to  say  more. 
I  have  only  tried  to  point  an  obvious  moral;  to 
show  what  a  rare  combination  of  circumstances 
with  character  and  intellect  is  required  to  produce 
a  really  monumental  work;  to  show  how  easy  it 
generally  is  even  for  the  competent  man  of  genius 
to  mistake  his  path  at  starting  or  to  be  distracted 
from  it  by  tempting  accidents;  how  necessary 
may  be  not  only  the  intervention  of  fortunate 
accidents,  but  even  the  presence  of  qualities 
which,  in  other  relations,  must  be  regarded  as 
defects.  Happily  for  us,  the  man  came  when 
he  was  wanted,  and  just  such  as  he  was  wanted; 
but  after  studying  his  career,  we  understand  better 
than  ever  why  great  works  are  so  rare.  We  may 
probably  have  known  of  men — many  instances 


Gibbon's  Autobiography          175 

might  easily  be  suggested — who  might  be  com- 
pared to  Gibbon  in  natural  endowments,  and  who 
have  left  nothing  but  fragments,  or  been  confined 
to  obscure  tasks,  the  value  of  which  will  never  be 
sufficiently  recognised.  It  is  only  when  the  right 
player  comes,  and  the  right  cards  are  judiciously 
dealt  to  him  by  fortune,  that  the  great  successes 
can  be  accomplished. 

NOTE. — It  may  be  worth  while  to  explain  Lord 
Sheffield's  mode  of  constructing  Gibbon's  autobio- 
graphy, as  it  is  not  explicitly  set  out  in  the  recent 
publication.  Gibbon  wrote  six  MSS.,  marked  A  to  F. 
A  is  confined  to  an  account  of  previous  Gibbons,  and 
E>  is  a  brief  account  of  his  own  life  down  to  1770. 
Lord  Sheffield  only  used  these  for  the  opening  para- 
graphs. Gibbon  then  wrote  E,  giving  his  life  down  to 
1789;  then  C,  a  fuller  redaction  of  E  down  to  1770; 
then  B,  a  fuller  redaction  of  C  down  to  1764;  and 
finally  F,  a  fuller  redaction  of  B  down  to  1753. 
Lord  Sheffield  follows  the  last  version  in  each  case, 
F  to  1753,  B  from  1753  to  1764,  C  from  1764  to  1770, 
and  E  from  1770  to  1789.  He  prefers  the  shorter 
account  of  the  militia,  however,  in  C  to  that  in  B; 
and  restores  a  phrase  or  two  dropped  by  Gibbon.  So 
the  "sighed  as  a  lover  and  obeyed  as  a  son,"  and  the 
description  of  Adam  Smith  as  a  "master  of  moral 
and  political  wisdom"  come  from  C. 


Arthur  Young. 


THE  name  of  Arthur  Young  suggests  to  most 
readers  a  discussion  of  the  causes  of  the 
French  Revolution.  The  importance  of  the  famous 
Travels  in  France  is  in  fact  sufficiently  shown  by 
the  frequent  references  of  the  most  competent 
writers,  both  French  and  English.  Mr.  Morley, 
for  example,  declares  that  Young's  evidence  is  of 
more  value  than  all  the  speculations  of  Burke  and 
Paine  and  Mackintosh — the  English  protagonists 
in  the  great  controversy  of  the  time.  Young, 
again,  had  a  great  deal  to  say  upon  the  state  of 
Ireland  in  his  day,  besides  being  a  leading  author- 
ity upon  the  agricultural  development  of  England. 
No  one,  however,  need  fear  that  this  paper  will 
lead  him  into  profound  economical,  or  political, 
or  historical  discussions.  For  the  present  purpose, 
I  have  rather  to  protest  against  a  too  probable 
inference  suggested  by  these  topics.  Young's 
connection  with  them  may  probably  lead  those 
who  know  only  his  name  to  put  him  down  sum- 
marily in  the  great  class  bore;  to  assume  that  he 
was  only  a  ponderous  professor  of  the  dismal 

science,  or  an  early  example  of  that  most  estimable 

176 


Arthur  Young  177 

but  not  always  lively  species,  the  highly  intelligent 
politician  who  travels  in  vacation-time,  storing  his 
mind  with  useful  information  to  be  radiated  forth 
in  lectures  and  essays,  and  excite  the  admiration 
of  parliamentary  constituencies.  Young,  no 
doubt,  deserves  that  kind  of  glory  in  a  high 
degree.  What  I  wish  to  do  is  to  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  also  a  human  being — or  what 
in  our  disagreeable  modern  slang  is  called  a  "  per- 
sonality"— of  great  interest.  He  was  not  a 
walking  blue-book,  but  a  highly  sensitive,  enthusi- 
astic, impulsive,  and  affectionate  man  of  flesh  and 
blood,  whose  acquaintance  every  sensible  man 
would  have  been  glad  to  cultivate.  His  last 
biographer  congratulates  the  world  upon  the  fact 
that  he  did  not,  as  he  was  tempted  to  do,  become 
a  clergyman  or  a  soldier.  In  either  capacity  his 
peculiar  talents  would  no  doubt  have  been  com- 
paratively wasted.  As  a  soldier,  he  would  probably 
have  been  known  only  by  some  ingenious  but  futile 
enterprise.  Had  he  taken  orders  he  might  have 
rivalled  the  charm  of  some  of  his  amiable  con- 
temporaries— Gilbert  White  of  Selborne,  for 
example, — and  would  have  been  a  model  clergy- 
man of  the  good  old  patriarchal  type ;  but  he  would 
hardly  have  made  a  mark  upon  theological  specu- 
lation. Yet  his  actual  career,  however  appro- 
priate to  his  talent,  was  such  as  to  draw  a  certain 


VOL.  I. — 12 


1 78          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

shade  over  his  personal  qualities;  and  as  unfor- 
tunately he  was  not  commemorated  at  his  death  in 
an  adequate  biography,  they  have,  perhaps,  not 
been  sufficiently  recognised.  That  a  fuller  recogni- 
tion is  possible  is  due  in  great  part  to  Miss  Betham- 
Edwards,  who  prefixed  a  short  memoir  to  the  last 
edition  of  his  Travels  in  France  (1892).  Miss 
Betham-Edwards  did  her  duty  excellently;  she 
not  only  appreciated  his  qualities  but  had  access  to 
unpublished  sources,  including  diaries  and  letters 
of  great  interest.  The  necessary  limits  of  a  preface 
prevented  her  from  doing  more  than  drawing  a 
sketch,  life-like  as  far  as  it  goes,  which  tantalises 
the  reader  by  brief  glimpses  of  possible  filling  up 
of  details.  These  details  are  partly  supplied  by 
her  more  recent  publication  of  Young's  auto- 
biography (1898).  Young  was  not  a  Gibbon,  and 
did  not  correct  and  rewrite  four  times  over.  Miss 
Betham-Edwards  appears  to  have  done  her  best  by 
omitting  superfluous  digressions ;  and  in  any  case, 
has  given  us  a  life  full  of  interesting  indications  of 
character.1 

Arthur  Young  was  born  on  September  n,  1741. 

»Here  and  there  the  notes  might  be  a  little  fuller,  and  some 
information  might  have  been  gleaned  from  a  biographical 
dictionary.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Anti- Jacobin  mentioned 
at  page  362  was  not  the  famous  journal  edited  by  Gifford 
of  the  Quarterly,  but  its  successor,  a  monthly  magazine 
edited  by  a  different  Gifford.  Readers  might  have  been 
reminded  that  the  "Porcupine"  mentioned  in  the  same  place 


Arthur  Young  179 

He  was  the  son  of  a  respectable  prebendary, 
who  was  chaplain  to  Speaker  Onslow,  and  both 
squire  and  rector  of  the  parish  of  Bradfield,  near 
Bury  St.  Edmunds.  His  mother,  whose  maiden 
name  was  Cousmaker,  was  the  descendant  of  a 
Dutchman  who  had  followed  William  III.  to 
England.  Miss  Betham-Ed wards  suggests  that 
the  pleasant  rural  district  in  which  Young  passed 
his  infancy  may  account  for  his  love  of  scenery. 
Something  more  would  be  required  to  explain 
whence  a  man,  descended  from  Dutch  and  East 
Anglian  ancestry,  derived  the  mercurial  tempera- 
ment which  we  do  not  generally  associate  with 
either  country.  Both  father  and  mother,  however , 
were  handsome  and  intelligent,  and  we  do  not 
know  enough  of  the  laws  of  heredity  to  account 
for  the  appearance  of  this  brilliant  contrast  to 
the  ponderous  squires  of  Suffolk  and  the  three- 
breeched  merchants  of  Holland.  Anyhow,  Arthur 
Young  showed  his  qualities  early.  He  learned 
little  at  his  school,  Lavenham— partly,  he  thinks, 
because  he  became  so  much  a  favourite  with  his 
teacher  as  to  be  spared  the  usual  discipline.  When 

was  the  famous  Cobbett,  still  in  his  unregenerate  days,  and 
supposed  to  be  inspired  by  the  Tories.  Young  himself  ap- 
pears to  have  confused  the  two  Giffords.  "Peter  Pindar" 
did  so,  when  he,  to  his  cost,  tried  to  horsewhip  W.  Gifford 
for  an  attack  really  made  in  the  magazine  of  John  Gifford. 
This  confusion  constantly  reappears,  and  may  be  just  worth 
a  warning  word. 


180  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

he  was  about  ten,  however,  he  was  already 
"writing  a  history  of  England,'*  and  at  thirteen 
learning  to  dance  and  falling  in  love  with  the 
beautiful  daughter  of  a  village  grocer.  He  was 
taken  from  school  at  the  age  of  sixteen  and 
apprenticed  to  a  mercantile  firm  at  King's  Lynn. 
There  he  again  fell  in  love,  his  first  idol  being  the 
black-eyed  daughter  of  a  partner  in  the  firm,  who 
was  taking  music-lessons  from  Burney,  then 
organist  of  Lynn,  and  best  known  to  most  of  us 
as  Mme.  d'Arblay's  father.  He  was  already 
writing  pamphlets  and  getting  them  published, 
receiving  payment  in  "books,"  but  apparently 
learned  nothing  of  his  proper  business.  At  any 
rate,  on  his  father's  death  in  1759,  he  left  Lynn, 
"without  education,  profession,  pursuits,  or  em- 
ployment," and  for  want  of  other  occupation, 
took  a  farm  belonging  to  his  mother  at  Bradfield. 
To  improve  his  prospects,  he  married  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four  (in  1765)  a  Miss  Martha  Allen  of  Lynn, 
neither  the  first  nor  second  object  of  his  adorations, 
which  apparently  it  would  not  be  easy  to  enum- 
erate. He  might  have  made  a  better  choice.  Mrs. 
Young  is  said  to  have  been  shrewish,  and  Young 
certainly  regretted  his  precipitance.  The  marriage 
was  unhappy  from  the  first;  and  Young  records 
that,  even  when  his  wife  was  in  good  health,  she 
became  all  the  more  "irritable,"  and  life  a  mere 


Arthur  Young  181 

"scene  of  worrying."  The  lady  was  sister-in-law 
of  Mrs.  Stephen  Allen,  Burney's  second  wife, 
and  stepmother  of  Miss  Burney,  who  has  left  some 
characteristic  touches.  Young  confided  to  Miss 
Burney  a  few  years  later,  either  from  confidence 
in  her  prudence,  she  says,  or  from  his  general 
"carelessness  of  consequences,"  that  he  was  the 
"most  miserable  fellow  breathing,"  and  that  "if 
he  were  to  begin  the  world  again,  no  earthly  thing 
should  prevail  with  him  to  marry. ' '  On  the  whole, 
one  might  expect  that  a  youth,  who  is  bound  to  an 
uncongenial  wife  and  proposes  to  make  his  living 
by  farming,  chiefly  because  he  knows  as  little  of 
any  other  employment  as  he  does  of  agriculture, 
has  made  an  unpromising  start  in  life.  But  those 
who  may  have  made  such  a  prophecy  had  not 
taken  into  account  Young's  marvellous  elasticity. 
He  was  one  of  the  men  who,  if  in  the  depths  of 
depression  at  one  moment,  are  sure  to  be  at  the 
height  of  exhilaration  in  the  next.  Nothing  could 
permanently  suppress  or  daunt  him.  Compensa- 
tions were  sure  to  turn  up.  If  his  wife  was  for  the 
most  part  a  thorn  in  his  flesh,  he  was  at  least  a 
most  affectionate  father.  His  own  farming  opera- 
tions were  as  little  successful  as  though  his  lot  had 
been  cast  in  the  worst  days  of  depression ;  but  they 
entitled  him  to  set  up  almost  at  once  as  an  author- 
ity upon  the  theory  of  agriculture.  He  made  tours, 


182  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and  published  accounts  of  his  observations.  The 
result  of  his  own  experience  was,  as  he  puts  it, 
"nothing  but  ignorance,  folly,  presumption,  and 
rascality"  (the  rascality,  we  hope,  in  spite  of  the 
grammar,  was  that  of  his  neighbours) ;  but  he 
learned  to  judge  of  other  people's  farms,  and  his 
books  were  of  most  singular  "  utility  to  the  general 
agriculture  of  the  kingdom."  He  failed  at  his 
native  place,  after  a  short  time,  and  immediately 
took  a  larger  farm,  and  had  to  pay  ;£ioo  to  another 
man  to  take  it  off  his  hands,  when  his  successor 
made  a  fortune  out  of  it.  At  a  third  farm  he 
spent  nine  years,  with  the  sensation  of  having  been 
all  the  time  "in  the  jaws  of  a  wolf."1  He  had, 
he  says,  tried  3000  experiments;  and  must  there- 
fore be  reckoned  wise  if  we  may  invert  Darwin's 
criterion  that  a  fool  is  a  man  who  never  tried  an 
experiment.  There  is,  however,  such  a  thing  as 
being  wise  for  others  instead  of  for  oneself. 
Whether  Young's  general  views  were  sound  is 
more  than  I  know.  They  were  at  least  stimulating. 
He  was  becoming  well  known  to  agricultural 
reformers,  and  from  1773  to  1776  he  travelled 
in  Ireland,  where  he  was,  for  a  short  time,  agent 
to  Lord  Kingsborough's  estates  in  County  Cork. 
Whatever  was  the  result  to  Lord  Kingsborough, 

»See   also   Young's  statement   in  Annals  of  Agriculture, 
vol.  xv. 


Arthur  Young  183 

Young's  experience  was  embodied  in  a  book  upon 
Ireland  second  only  in  value  to  the  French  travels. 
He  settled  again  at  Bradfield  upon  his  mother's 
property,  and  there,  after  a  time,  started  a  new 
project.  Next  to  the  farming  without  experience, 
one  of  the  most  promising  roads  to  ruin  that 
can  be  suggested  is  starting  a  serious  and  scientific 
periodical.  Young  accordingly,  in  1738,  set  up  the 
Annals  of  Agriculture,  which  was  to  be  the  organ 
of  all  benevolent  men  and  good  farmers.  It 
certainly  succeeded  in  so  far  as  it  attracted 
notice ;  and  it  is  worth  turning  over,  not  only  for 
Young's  own  articles,  but  because  it  contains 
contributions  from  many  of  the  most  distinguished 
men  of  the  time  upon  important  topics.  The 
poor-laws,  for  example,  are  discussed  by  Jeremy 
Bentham  and  Sir  F.  Eden,  the  author  of  the 
leading  book  upon  the  subject.  Another  con- 
tributor, who  conceals  himself  under  the  modest 
name  of ' '  Ralph  Robinson ,  farmer  at  Windsor, ' '  was 
no  less  a  person,  as  Young  tells  us,  than  George  III. 
himself.1  Young,  however,  has  still  to  complain 
of  his  financial  results.  His  circulation  only 
amounts  after  seven  years  to  three  hundred  and 

'George  III.  was  believed  by  Bentham  to  have  been  his 
anonymous  antagonist  in  a  newspaper  controversy,  and  to 
this  circumstance  the  philosopher  attributed  the  king's  last- 
ing antipathy  to  the  famous  "  Panopticon. "  Bentham,  I  guess 
was  the  victim  of  a  practical  joke  in  this  instance;  but  Young 
appears  to  speak  from  knowledge.— Autobiography,  p.  112. 


1 84          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

fifty ;  and  he  is  still  engaged  in  the  familiar  employ- 
ment of  flogging  a  dead  horse.  The  Annals  only 
just  paid  their  way;  but  they  spread  his  fame. 
His  name  on  the  title-page  is  followed  by  a  list  of 
titles  which  shows  that  he  had  received  honours  in 
France,  Russia,  Germany,  Italy,  and  Switzerland. 
Among  his  admirers  was  the  philanthropic  Due  de 
Liancourt — the  Anglomaniac  French  nobleman 
who  announced  to  Louis  XVI.  that  the  fall  of  the 
Bastille  was  not  a  revolt  but  a  revolution.  On 
Liancourt's  invitation  Young  made  his  famous 
French  tours  from  1787  to  1790. 

The  travels  are  most  deservedly  famous,  but 
they  have  hardly  been  popular  in  the  same  pro- 
portion. In  French,  indeed,  they  have  had  a  very 
large  circulation;  but  in  England  they  brought 
more  fame  than  profit.  They  owe  such  popu- 
larity as  they  achieved  to  the  advice  of  a  very 
sensible  friend.  The  tour  in  Ireland,  said  this 
adviser,  had  no  great  success,  because  it  was 
chiefly  a  "farming  diary."  It  was  filled  with 
elaborate  statistics  and  tables  of  prices  which 
presupposed  a  strong  appetite  for  information  in 
the  reader.  The  right  plan  to  gain  readers  was 
to  put  down  the  notes  made  at  the  moment  as 
they  occurred  to  him.  The  book  might  lose  in 
solidity,  but  would  gain  in  vivacity.  Young 
fortunately  took  this  advice,  which  deserves  to  be. 


Arthur  Young  185 

recorded  as  one  of  the  few  known  instances  of 
advice  by  which  an  author  has  actually  profited. 
It  was,  in  fact,  singularly  appropriate,  for  Young 
was  essentially  a  man  whose  first  impressions  were 
the  most  valuable,  as  well  as  the  most  amusing. 
It  is  often  better  to  know  what  a  man  thought 
than  to  know  what  he  afterwards  thought  that 
he  ought  to  have  thought.  "I  was  totally 
mistaken  in  my  prediction,"  as  he  quaintly 
remarks  in  a  note  to  his  Travels,  "and  yet,  on  a 
revision,  I  think  that  I  was  right  in  it."  That 
is,  the  facts  which  really  happened  were  those 
which,  at  the  time,  were  the  most  unlikely  to 
happen.  Few  historical  facts,  indeed,  are  more 
interesting  than  the  visions,  never  to  be  precisely 
realised,  which  animated  the  imagination  of  the 
first  observers  of  great  movements.  Young,  too, 
was  better  at  observation  than  at  reflection.  When 
he  revised  his  journals  of  former  tours  and  cut  out 
the  personal  elements,  he  was  substituting  a  set 
of  statistical  diagrams  for  a  concrete  picture ;  and 
he  filled  the  vacant  space  by  economic  specula- 
tions often  of  very  inferior  merit.  Miss  Betham- 
Edwards,  indeed,  declares,  as  it  is  natural  for  an 
enthusiastic  biographer  to  declare,  that  Young  in- 
stinctively anticipated  Adam  Smith,  and  Mill, 
and  Cobden,  and  all  the  pundits  of  political 
economy.  He  was,  if  I  may  be  pardoned  for 


1 86         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

saying  so,  much  too  charming  a  person  to  deserve 
that  equivocal  praise.  He  is  delightful  by  reason 
of  his  vivacity,  his  amiable  petulance,  and  uncon- 
scious inconsistencies.  The  wisest  philosopher, 
if  he  honestly  put  down  his  first  thoughts,  would 
be  always  contradicting  himself.  We  get  the 
appearance  of  consistency  only  because  we  take 
time  to  correct,  and  qualify,  and  compare,  and 
extenuate,  and  very  often  we  spoil  our  best 
thoughts  in  the  process.  What  would  not  Mr. 
Ruskin  lose  if  he  cared  for  consistency?  The 
price  of  suppressing  first  thoughts  may  be  worth 
paying  by  a  man  whose  strength  lies  in  logic; 
but  with  a  keen,  rapid,  impetuous  observer  like 
Arthur  Young  we  would  rather  do  the  correcting 
for  ourselves.  His  best  phrases  are  impromptu 
ejaculations.  "  Oh,  if  I  were  Legislator  of  France 
for  a  day,"  he  exclaims,  at  the  sight  of  estates 
left  waste  for  game-preserving,  "I  would  make 
such  great  lords  skip  again!"  These  sentiments, 
he  assures  the  reader,  were  "  those  of  the  moment," 
and  he  was  half  inclined  to  strike  out  many  such 
passages.  It  was  because  they  were  "of  the 
moment"  that  they  are  so  impressive.  Had 
he  omitted  them  he  would  have  taken  off  the 
edge  of  his  best  passages,  though  he  might  have 
expressed  his  later  views  more  correctly. 

This  temperament,  I  need  hardly  argue,  is  not 


Arthur  Young  187 

the  ideal  one  for  a  political  economist.  His 
views  should  be  expressible  in  columns  of  figures, 
and  he  should  never  let  a  vivid  impression  guide 
him  till  he  has  reduced  it  to  tangible  statements  of 
loss  and  gain.  He  must  deal  in  sober  black  and 
white,  and  be  on  his  guard  against  the  brilliant 
shifting  colours  which  are  apt  to  generate  illusions 
as  to  the  real  proportions  of  the  objects  of  vision. 
Young,  indeed,  was  a  sound  economist,  and  that, 
no  doubt,  is  what  Miss  Betham-Edwards  means, 
in  so  far  as  he  was  a  thorough  Free-Trader.  The 
"whole  system  of  monopoly,"  he  declares,  "is 
rotten  to  the  core,  and  the  true  principle  and 
vital  spring  and  animating  soul  of  commerce  is 
LIBERTY!"  That,  however  sound  may  be  the 
doctrine,  is  the  utterance  of  an  enthusiast,  not  of 
a  sober,  logical  reasoner.  He  was  animated  by 
the  spirit  of  the  contemporary  philosophy.  The 
great  object  of  his  idolatry  was  Rousseau.  In 
his  French  travels  he  visits  the  tomb  of  that  "im- 
mortal" and" splendid  genius"  whose  "magic"  is 
teaching  French  mothers  to  nurse  their  children, 
and  French  nobles  to  love  a  country  life.  He  de- 
nounces the  "  vile  spirit  of  bigotry  "  which  hunted 
Rousseau  during  his  life  as  though  he  had  been 
a  mad  dog.  At  Chambery  he  turns  even  from 
his  economical  speculation  to  something  still  more 
interesting,  the  house  of  the  "  deliciously  amiable" 


1 88         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Mme.  de  Warens,  and  described  "by  the  inimit- 
able pencil  of  Rousseau."  He  sought  for  infor- 
mation about  the  lady,  and  could  only  discover 
that  she  was  "certainly  dead."  In  fact,  as  he 
produces  a  certificate  of  the  occurrence  of  that 
event  some  thirty  years  before,  there  seems  to  be 
no  reason  for  doubting  it.  With  this  enthusiasm 
Young  found  a  keen  interest  in  the  writings  of 
the  French  economists,  whose  theory  of  the  sur- 
passing importance  of  agriculture  was  more  con- 
genial to  him  than  Adam  Smith's  rival  doctrines. 
One  of  the  most  amusing  episodes  in  his  French 
travels  records  his  visit  to  the  scene  of  the  labours 
of  the  great  Marquis  de  Turbilly.  The  reader 
who  is  ashamed  of  not  remembering  the  name 
may  be  comforted  by  finding  that  even  in  his  own 
country  the  great  man's  memory  had  faded  within 
twelve  years  of  his  death.  Young,  however, 
boldly  introduced  himself  to  the  new  proprietor 
of  the  estates,  was  introduced  to  one  of  Turbilly's 
old  labourers,  and  went  off  happy  with  an  auto- 
graph of  the  great  marquis  to  be  placed  among 
his  curiosities.  Other  pilgrimages  of  the  same 
kind,  to  places  connected  with  names  faintly  re- 
membered, it  is  to  be  feared,  in  England,  prove 
the  keenness  of  Young's  interest  in  the  literature 
of  his  favourite  subject.  Young's  belief  in  Free 
Trade  implies  his  acceptance  of  the  chief  doctrine 


Arthur  Young  189 

of  the  Economists,  and  his  sympathy  with  the 
general  movement  of  the  time.  Any  one  who 
should  be  surprised  that  Young  as  the  staunchest 
of  agriculturists  was  not  a  Protectionist  would, 
of  course,  be  guilty  of  an  anachronism.  In  those 
days  Adam  Smith  observes  that  the  landowning 
classes  are  far  more  liberal  than  the  manufacturers. 
England  was  only  just  ceasing  to  export  corn, 
and  Young  was  roused  to  his  most  indignant 
mood  by  the  desire  of  the  clothmakers  to  main- 
tain restrictions  upon  the  exports  of  English 
wool.  What  he  really  illustrates,  indeed,  is  the 
spirit  which  we  generally  associate  with  the  great 
revolution  of  manufactures,  as  applied  to  the 
contemporary  development  of  agriculture. 

Another  variety  of  Young's  enthusiasm  makes 
a  pleasant  and  characteristic  contrast  to  his  dis- 
cussions as  to  the  prices  of  corn  and  rates  of 
wages.  A  genuine  love  of  scenery  breaks  out 
in  his  English  tours,  though  it  is  generally  con- 
signed to  the  notes,  the  text  being  preserved  for 
the  graver  purposes  of  statistical  information.  It 
has,  too,  a  peculiar  turn  which  marks  the  man. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  our  admiration  for 
"Nature"  is  really  so  new  as  we  sometimes  fancy. 
The  old  squire  or  country  parson  may  have  loved 
the  forest  or  the  moor  as  well  as  his  descendants, 
though  his  love  was  unconscious.  The  scenery 


190          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

may  have  given  a  charm  to  his  favourite  pursuits, 
his  fishing  or  his  hunting,  though  he  did  not  talk 
about  it,  or  even  know  it.  Scenery,  even  in 
poetry,  was  kept  in  the  background  of  human 
figures,  but  was  not  less  distinctly  present.  In 
Young's  time,  however,  the  country  gentleman 
was  becoming  civilised  and  polished;  he  was 
building  mansions  with  classical  porticoes,  filling 
them  with  pictures  bought  on  the  "grand  tour," 
and  laying  out  grounds  with  the  help  of  Kent  or 
a  "capability"  Brown.  He  was  beginning,  that 
is,  to  appreciate  the  advantage  of  adapting  the 
environment  to  his  dwelling-place;  and  the  new 
art  of  "landscape  gardening"  was  putting  the  old 
formal  gardens  out  of  fashion.  Pope's  garden  at 
Twickenham  had  become  famous,  and  Shenstone, 
as  Johnson  puts  it,  had  "begun  to  point  his 
prospects,  to  diversify  his  surface,  to  entangle  his 
walks,  and  to  wind  his  waters ;  which  he  did  with 
such  judgment  and  such  fancy,  as  made  his  little 
domain  the  envy  of  the  great  and  the  admiration 
of  the  skilful."  Johnson  will  not  inquire  whether 
this  "  demands  any  great  powers  of  mind,"  but 
he  admits  that  "  to  embellish  the  form  of  nature 
is  an  innocent  amusement."  Young,  who  was 
a  most  determined  and  indefatigable  sightseer, 
had  no  misgivings  about  the  "powers  of  mind" 
required.  He  visits  the  houses  of  the  nobility  most 


Arthur  Young  191 

conscientiously,  gives  little  criticisms  of  their  pic- 
tures, which  have  at  least  the  merit  of  perfect 
simplicity,  and  falls  into  ecstasies  over  the  "em- 
bellishments of  the  form  of  nature. ' '  He  visited  the 
Lakes  at  the  time  when  Gray  was  writing  his  now 
celebrated  letters,  and  his  descriptions  are  equally 
enthusiastic,  if  not  of  equal  literary  excellence. 
He  "does"  the  neighbourhood  of  Keswick  in  the 
most  systematic  way ;  and,  I  am  glad  to  say  it  to 
his  honour,  is  not  content  without  climbing  to  the 
top  of  Skiddaw.  He  complains  gently,  however, 
that  art  has  not  been  properly  called  in  to  the  aid 
of  nature.  He  would  like  winding  walks  and 
properly  fenced  seats,  which  should  enable  him 
to  look  comfortably  from  the  edge  of  precipices, 
and  be  led  to  them  as  a  well-arranged  surprise. 
His  eloquence  is  stimulated  to  the  highest  flights 
when  he  visits  Persfield  on  the  "Why"  (as  he 
spells  the  river's  name).  There  a  judicious  im- 
prover has  laid  out  an  estate  in  the  most  skilful 
way,  so  as  to  display  the  glories  of  the  Wyndcliff 
and  its  neighbourhood.  Young  is  almost  carried 
off  his  feet  by  his  delight,  but  he  recovers  suf- 
ficiently to  intimate  some  gentle  and  apologetic 
criticisms.  He  gives  us  an  aesthetic  discussion  as 
to  the  correct  method  of  mixing  the  sublime  with 
the  beautiful  in  due  proportions.  Young's  con- 
temporary, Gilpin,  remarks  of  the  saii!e  place  that 


.&, 


192          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

it  is  not  "picturesque,"  but  extremely  romantic, 
and  gives  a  loose  to  the  "  most  pleasing  riot  of  the 
imagination."  Nothing  in  the  way  of  literature 
seems  to  keep  so  ill  as  assthetic  criticism ;  and  we 
must  not  be  hard  upon  these  poor  old  gentlemen. 
They  held  that  nature  wanted  a  little  judicious 
arranging  and  dramatising.  At  Wentworth  he 
pronounces  that  the  woods  and  waters  are 
"sketched  with  great  taste,"  and  that  the  woods 
in  particular  have  a  "solemn  brownness"  which  is 
gratifying  to  the  connoisseur.  Young  had  not 
read  Wordsworth,  for  obvious  reasons,  and  when 
he  wants  a  bit  of  poetry  has  generally  to  resort 
to  Pope's  "breathes  a  browner  horror  o'er  the 
woods."  He  much  approves  of  a  statue  of  Ceres 
and  "  a  Chinese  temple"  which  temper  the  rawness 
of  nature  at  Wentworth;  and  elsewhere  he  gives 
another  of  his  artless  assthetic  disquisitions  upon 
the  proper  theory  of  sham  ruins.  They  ought, 
he  thinks,  to  represent  the  real  thing,  and  should 
not  be  made  into  mere  places  for  tea-drinking. 
Whatever  may  be  Young's  limitations,  however, 
it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  his  enthusiasm  for 
the  beauties  of  nature  is  as  hearty  and  genuine  as 
that  of  Gray  or  of  any  of  the  generation  which 
learned  its  canons  of  taste  from  Wordsworth.  At 
Killarney,  for  example,  he  is  thrown  into  raptures 
of  the  most  orthodox  variety,  and  when  he  comes 


Arthur  Young  193 

within  sight  of  the  Pyrenees  Mr.  Ruskin  himself 
could  not  accuse  him  of  deficient  feeling.  "This 
prospect"  (from  Montauban),  he  says,  "which 
contains  a  semicircle  of  a  hundred  miles  in 
diameter,  has  an  oceanic  vastness  in  which  the 
eye  loses  itself;  an  almost  boundless  scene  of 
cultivation;  an  animated,  but  confused,  mass  of 
infinitely  varied  parts,  melting  gradually  into  the 
distant  obscure,  from  which  emerges  the  amazing 
frame  of  the  Pyrenees,  rearing  their  silvered  heads 
far  above  the  clouds."  Young,  one  cannot  doubt 
after  reading  this  and  other  passages,  would  have 
been  in  these  days  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Alpine  Club,  as  well  as  of  his  numerous  foreign 
agricultural  societies. 

There  is,  indeed,  one  exception  to  his  enthu- 
siasm. He  would  not  have  accepted  Scott's  love 
of  the  heather.  He  always  speaks  of  "heather 
and  ling"  with  a  kind  of  personal  animosity. 
They  are  signs  of  the  abomination  of  desolation, 
His  criticism  of  French  chateaux  shows  both 
sentiments.  He  is  shocked,  and  with  sufficient 
reason,  at  the  game-preserving  wastes  which  sur- 
round them;  but  he  is  also  disgusted,  in  a  minor 
degree,  by  the  want  of  proper  landscape-garden- 
ing. Their  great  houses  are  often  built  in  the 
purlieus  of  a  town;  and  what  might  be  made 
into  beautiful  grounds  abandoned  to  the  baser 

VOL.  I. — 13 


194          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

purposes  of  stables  or  other  utilitarian  erections. 
Young  naturally  has  the  eye  of  the  country 
gentleman,  as  his  successor  Cobbett  had  the  eye 
of  the  practical  farmer.  Neither  could  take  the 
simply  sentimental  view;  and  in  each,  therefore,  a 
most  genuine  love  of  country  scenery  is  com- 
bined with  an  almost  fanatical  horror  of  a  waste. 
Young  would  have  sympathised  with  Cobbett's 
denunciation  of  the  "accursed  hill"  of  Hindhead, 
which  some  of  us  now  find  to  possess  certain 
charms ;  or  have  approved  De  Foe's  remark,  that 
Bagshot  Heath  had  been  placed  by  Providence  so 
near  to  London  in  order  to  rebuke  the  pride  of 
Englishmen  by  showing  that  the  heart  of  their 
own  country  could  be  as  desolate  as  a  Scottish 
moor.  Young,  however,  approved  what  Cobbett 
had  begun  to  dread,  the  application  to  agriculture 
of  the  same  spirit  which  was  creating  the  manu- 
facturing system.  His  ideal  was  the  improving 
landlord.  He  accepts  Gulliver's  maxim  that  the 
man  who  could  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  one  had  grown  before,  would  deserve  more 
of  his  country  than  all  the  politicians  put  to- 
gether. Young  had,  as  he  said,  passed  his  life 
up  to  fifty  in  trying  to  fulfil  that  duty;  and  he 
was  not  less  energetic  afterwards.  It  sums  up 
his  whole  code  of  conduct.  Every  political  and 
economical  project  was  to  be  estimated  by  its 


Arthur  Young  195 

tendency  to  increase  the  produce  of  agriculture. 
Other  ends  are  secondary.     The  sight  of  land 
which  might  bear  corn  and  only  produced  ling 
vexes  his  very  soul.    He  regarded  Enfield  Chase 
as  a  simple  "nuisance" — a  scandal  to  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  country, — and  he  calculates  that 
Salisbury  Plain  might  be  made  to  grow  food  for 
the  whole  population.     For  sympathy,  again,  he 
looked  to  the  country  gentleman.     Not  one  farmer 
in  five  thousand,  he  complains,  ever  read  a  book ; 
he  is  not  foolish  enough  to  waste  his  missionary 
zeal  upon  them ;  but  the  country  happily  abounds 
with  gentlemen-farmers,  and  they  are  the  sources 
of  all  improvement.     His  heroes  are  lull,  who 
introduced  turnips;  and  Weston,  who  introduced 
clover;   and   Lord   Townshend   and   Mr.   Allen, 
who   introduced   marling   into   Norfolk.     Wher- 
ever he  sees  a  gentleman  who  has  the  sense  to 
devote  himself  to  such  labours,  he  pours  out 
blessings  on  his  head.     I  do  not  know  whether 
he   is   most   enthusiastic   over   the   Marquis   of 
Rockingham,   who   had   taught  the  farmers   of 
Yorkshire   to   grow  better  crops;   or  over   the 
Duke   of    Bridgewater,   whose   great  canal  was 
among  the  first  symptoms  of  the  great  manu- 
facturing development  of  Lancashire.     He  has 
an  incarnation    of     the  spirit  of    improvement 
which  was   transforming   England  in  his  days; 


Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and  there  is  something  pleasant  in  his  sanguine 
optimism  as  to  public  affairs,  when  his  own  little 
enterprises  were  anything  but  prosperous.  The 
darker  side  of  the  great  industrial  revolution 
which  was  to  alarm  Cobbett  was  still  hidden 
from  him.  The  growth  of  pauperism,  which 
began  with  war  and  famine  at  the  end  of  the 
century,  was  still  in  the  future.  In  the  earlier 
period  all  patriots  were  still  lamenting  over  an 
imaginary  decline  of  the  population,  which  could 
not  be  disproved  by  the  imperfect  statistics  of  the 
time.  Young  has  to  meet  their  jeremiads  by 
rather  conjectural  figures,  as  well  as  by  his  own 
observations  of  growing  prosperity  on  all  sides. 
His  views  are  often  oddly  different  from  those 
which  came  up  with  the  next  generation.  He 
denounces  the  poor-laws  partly  on  the  familiar 
ground  that  they  are  demoralising  incentives  to 
idleness.  But  he  hates  them  still  more  because 
they  were,  as  he  puts  it,  "framed  in  the  very 
spirit  of  depopulation."  He  reckons  it  as  one  of 
the  great  advantages  of  Ireland  that  the  absence 
of  poor-laws  encourages  a  rapid  increase  of  the 
numbers  of  the  people.  No  one  could  speak  more 
warmly  of  the  importance  of  improving  the 
condition  of  the  poor  in  Ireland  and  elsewhere, 
but  he  has  no  thought  of  the  dangers  which 
alarmed  Malthus  and  the  later  economists.  The 


Arthur  Young  197 

one  merit  of  the  old  poor-laws  according  to  them 
was  that  the  parishes  had  an  interest  in  checking 
the  growth  of  the  population.  That,  according 
to  Young,  was  the  cardinal  vice  of  the  system. 
The  great  aim  of  the  statesman  should  be  an 
increase  of  population.  The  way  to  increase 
population  is  to  take  all  fetters  from  industry. 
Cultivate  waste  lands;  turn  Salisbury  Plain 
into  arable  fields;  carry  cultivation,  as  Macaulay 
hoped  we  should  do,  to  the  top  of  Helvellyn  and 
Ben  Nevis;  make  roads  and  canals;  introduce 
threshing-machines  and  steam-engines,  and  popu- 
lation will  increase  with  the  means  of  employment. 
He  is  a  little  puzzled  at  times  by  the  conflict  of 
interests.  Low  wages,  he  remarks,  are  good  for 
the  employer;  and  he  observes  that,  in  London, 
wages  are  high.  Therefore,  he  argues,  the  states- 
man should  limit  the  size  of  London.  There  are 
other  reasons  for  this.  London  is  a  devouring 
gulf;  the  deaths  greatly  exceed  the  births;  it  is 
actually  eating  away  population,  and  should 
somehow  be  kept  down  in  the  interests  of  agri- 
culture. Another  symptom  which  vexes  Young's 
soul  is  the  enormous  consumption  of  tea.  Tea, 
in  the  first  place,  is  debilitating  generally,  and 
therefore  tends  to  diminish  numbers;  and,  in  the 
second  place,  it  is  unfavourable  to  agriculture. 
If  all  the  money  spent  upon  tea  were  spent  upon 


198          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

corn,  enough  corn  could  be  raised,  as  he  calculates, 
to  support  four  millions  of  people.  Finally,  the 
money  spent  upon  tea  is  all  thrown  away  upon 
the  Chinese  instead  of  supporting  British  indus- 
try. He  is  following  the  lead  of  Jonas  Hanway, 
whose  arguments  to  the  same  effect  had  pro- 
voked Johnson's  famous  eulogy  upon  his  favourite 
beverage.  Young  was  evidently  rather  vague  in 
his  political  economy;  though  it  would  be  unfair 
to  take  some  of  these  obiter  dicta,  thrown  out  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment,  as  his  definite  conclu- 
sions. In  another  respect,  Young  is  very  unlike 
his  followers.  How  are  we  to  get  rich?  he  asks; 
and  his  answer  is,  by  increasing  our  debt  of  one 
hundred  and  forty  millions  to  two  hundred  millions. 
The  additional  sum,  he  explains  is  to  be  spent  on 
reclaiming  waste  lands.  He  wishes  Government 
to  interfere  energetically,  and  complains  bitterly 
that  English  statesmen  have  always  neglected  agri- 
culture. England,  as  he  tells  a  French  friend,  "  has 
had  many  Colberts  but  not  one  Sully."  Our  hus- 
bandry has  flourished  in  the  teeth  of  our  Ministers, 
and  is  far  from  what  it  would  be  had  it  received 
the  same  attention  as  trade  and  manufactures. 
Once  more,  to  make  two  blades  grow  in  the  place 
of  one  is  the  ultimate  object  of  all  rational  conduct, 
the  tendency  to  produce  that  result  the  criterion 
of  all  policy,  and  energy  in  bringing  it  about  the 


Arthur  Young  199 

duty   of  all   ministers,    politicians,   and   private 
persons.     All  good  things  will  follow. 

Young's  devoted  and  unflagging  zeal  and  his 
sanguine  confidence  in  his  principles  are  equally 
attractive,  whatever  the  inconsistencies  or  rashness 
of  his  speculations.  This  must  be  remembered  in 
reading  his  French  travels.  Young  is  generally 
cited  as  justifying  the  Revolution,  and  his  later 
recantation  regarded  as  one  of  the  many  instances 
of  inconsistency  due  to  the  Reign  of  Terror.  It 
must  be  observed,  however,  and  it  certainly  does 
not  diminish  the  value  of  his  evidence,  that  Young 
was  never  a  thorough  political  follower  of  the 
revolutionists.  His  real  sympathy  was  with  his 
Anglomaniac  friends,  Liancourt  and  his  like. 
The  question  is,  as  he  says  in  1789,  whether  the 
French  will  adopt  the  British  Constitution  with 
improvements,  or  listen  to  speculative  theorists. 
The  result  in  the  latter  case  would  be  "inextric- 
able confusion  and  civil  wars."  Young's  great 
merit  is  precisely  that  he  records  his  impressions 
of  fact  so  vividly  and  candidly  that  the  value  of 
his  evidence  is  quite  independent  of  the  correct- 
ness of  his  political  conclusions.  I  will  not  ask 
what  those  conclusions  should  be.  Young's  point 
of  view  is  the  characteristic  point  for  us.  The 
French  conditions  inverted  his  English  experience. 
In  England  he  has  to  be  constantly  lamenting  the 


200          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

want  of  roads;  but  what  roads  there  were  were 
thronged.  In  France  there  are  magnificent  roads, 
but  "circulation  is  stagnant."  In  Languedoc  he 
passes  "  an  incredible  number  of  splendid  bridges 
and  many  superb  causeways,"  but  a  certain 
Croix  Blanche  is  an  "execrable  receptacle  of  filth, 
vermin,  impudence,  and  imposition,"  presided 
over  by  "  a  withered  hag,  the  demon  of  beastliness. ' ' 
Not  a  carriage  is  to  be  had.  In  England  you  have 
towns  of  3000  people  cut  off  from  all  high-roads, 
yet  with  clean  inns,  civil  hosts,  and  a  post-chaise 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice.  Young  wishes  to 
have  both  the  energetic  Government  and  the 
energy  of  private  enterprise.  He  admires  the 
great  public  works  of  France,  but  is  stirred  to 
wrath  by  the  apathy  of  the  individual  Frenchman. 
Though  he  is  constantly  acknowledging  the 
courtesy  of  Frenchmen,  and  their  superiority  in 
many  points  of  refinement,  he  is  oddly  annoyed 
by  their  taciturnity.  He  can  never  get  any 
adequate  conversation  at  a  table  d"  hole.  Possibly 
the  excellent  Young,  who  was  clearly  ready  to 
talk  to  anybody,  was  a  little  impeded  in  France 
by  the  fact  that  (as  we  learn  from  Miss  Burney) 
his  knowledge  of  the  language  was  limited,  and 
he  filled  up  any  gaps  by  inserting  English  words 
with  an  imitation  of  the  French  accent.  He 
could  certainly  make  a  speech  under  pressure, 


Arthur  Young  201 

for  he  describes  how  he  once  pacified  a  suspicious 
mob,  which  thought  that  the  inquisitive  traveller 
must  be  devising  schemes  for  taxation.  He 
pointed  out  that  in  his  own  country  the  rich 
were  taxed  for  the  poor, — there  was  some  good  in 
the  poor-laws,  after  all!  But  a  further  explana- 
tion is  suggested  by  his  lamentation  over  the 
surprising  ignorance  of  their  own  affairs  in  the 
provinces.  There  were  no  newspapers  and  no 
political  talk,  even  at  the  exciting  times  of  the 
Revolution.  Petty  English  tradesmen,  he  de- 
clares, were  talking  about  the  last  news  from 
France  all  over  the  country,  before  any  interest  in 
the  matter  had  spread  to  the  people  directly 
affected.  In  English  counties  the  newspaper 
circulated  from  the  squire's  hall  to  the  farmer 
or  the  small  artisan;  but  the  French  seigneurs 
formed  no  centres  of  superior  enlightenment. 
They  crowded  into  the  towns  and  spent  their 
rents  upon  the  theatres;  they  only  visited  the 
country  when  they  were  banished ;  and  then  they 
turned  great  districts  into  mere  wildernesses  to  be 
roamed  over  by  boars,  wolves,  and  deer.  They 
made  one  blade  grow  where  two  had  grown  before. 
Young  admired  the  English  country  gentleman  as 
the  active  supporter  and  originator  of  all  improve- 
ments. His  French  rival  was  a  mere  incubus,  an 
effete  "  survival. "  In  France,  according  to  Young, 


202          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

half,  if  not  two-thirds  of  the  land  was  already  in 
the  hands  of  small  proprietors.  Peasants  supplied 
the  industry,  and  carried  out  what  improvements 
there  were.  They  illustrated  his  famous  phrase, 
"The  magic  of  property  turns  sand  to  gold." 
Meanwhile  the  great  seigneurs  do  nothing;  they 
receive  quit-rents  and  enforce  tailles  and  corve'es, 
and  all  the  oppressive  incidents  of  feudal  tenure. 
Young  accordingly  transfers  to  the  peasantry 
the  sympathy  which  in  England  he  felt  for  the 
country  gentleman.  He  did  not  object  to  the 
large  proprietor  as  such;  but  to  the  proprietor, 
large  or  small,  who  did  not  do  his  duty  by  his 
property.  He  draws  up  an  indictment  against  the 
French  nobility,  which  is  all  the  more  impressive 
because  it  does  not  imply  any  preconceived 
political  theories.  At  one  moment  he  even 
approves  of  the  French  peasantry  for  seizing 
waste  lands  by  force,  and  even  wishes  that  the 
English  peasantry  were  authorised  to  take  similar 
steps.  After  all,  waste  land  is  the  great  evil  of  the 
world.  But  it  is  quite  intelligible  that  from  his 
point  of  view  the  actual  course  of  affairs  in  France 
should  have  convinced  him  that  too  high  a  price 
might  be  paid  even  for  the  appropriation  of  a 
waste.  In  England,  Young's  zeal  for  agricultural 
improvements  was  never  qualified.  It  must,  he 
was  clear,  be  good  for  everybody.  He  tells  land- 


Arthur  Young  203 

lords  that  they  are  foolish  for  boasting  of  not 
raising  their  rents.  To  raise  rents  (within  limits, 
he  admits)  is  the  best  way  of  stimulating  industry. 
His  ideal  person  is  a  certain  wonderful  collier. 
The  owner  of  the  property  had  tried  to  improve 
the  condition  of  his  workmen  by  giving  them 
small  allotments  of  waste  land.  One  of  them 
worked  from  midnight  till  noon  in  the  mine,  and 
after  his  twelve  hours  spent  eight  more  upon  im- 
proving his  bit  of  land,  removing  gigantic  stones, 
and  finally  turning  nine  or  ten  acres  into  cultivated 
fields.  Young  celebrates  this  extraordinary  feat 
of  labouring  twenty  hours  a  day  for  several  years 
with  characteristic  enthusiasm,  and  offers  to  re- 
ceive subscriptions  for  the  hero,  which,  we  will 
hope,  enabled  the  poor  man  to  be  less  industrious. 
At  a  splenetic  moment  during  his  French 
travels,  Young,  riding  on  a  blind  mare,  just 
misses  a  meeting  with  Charles  Fox,  who  had 
excited  the  wonder  of  the  natives  by  his  modesty 
in  travelling  with  nothing  but  a  post-chaise,  a 
cabriolet  for  his  servants,  and  a  courier  to  order 
horses.  "A  plague  on  a  blind  mare!"  exclaims 
Young;  "but  I  have  worked  through  life,  and  he 
(that  is,  Fox)  TALKS  ! "  Young  had  talked  a  good 
deal  too,  especially  on  paper;  but  his  momentary 
grumble  was  pardonable.  His  "3000  experi- 
ments," and  his  various  attempts  to  get  out  of 


204          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

perpetual  anxiety  had  brought  him  little  but 
reputation.  George  III.,  indeed,  sent  him  a 
merino  ram,  much  to  his  satisfaction;  it  proved 
that  the  king  had  just  views  of  glory,  and  that  a 
period  was  coming  when  "more  homage"  would 
be  paid  to  a  prince  for  giving  "a  ram  to  a  farmer 
than  for  wielding  a  sceptre."  George  III.  soon 
found  it  necessary  to  devote  more  time  to  his 
sceptre  than  to  his  rams ;  but  Young's  career  was 
more  affected,  happily  or  otherwise,  by  another 
influence.  Sir  John  Sinclair  was  an  ideal  repre- 
sentative of  the  dismal  science.  He  atoned  for 
being  an  intolerable  bore  by  doing  some  excellent 
work.  He  inherited  a  large  estate  in  Caithness, 
and  began  his  reign  by  assembling  his  tenants 
and  making  in  one  day  a  road  over  an  inaccessible 
hill;  and  he  set  to  work  enclosing,  rearranging 
farms,  introducing  fisheries,  and  generally  rousing 
the  primitive  Gaelic  population  to  a  sense  of  the 
advantages  of  civilisation.  He  promoted  agri- 
cultural societies,  and  introduced  the  "  long  sheep" 
into  the  Highlands.  His  son  tells  us  that  due 
regard  was  paid  in  his  improvements  to  the 
interests  of  the  poor;  that  a  tide  of  prosperity 
set  in,  and  population  increased  rapidly.  At 
any  rate,  Sinclair  translated  into  practice  Young's 
most  cherished  principles.  Sinclair  sat  at  the 
feet  of  Adam  Smith ;  and  travelled  to  Sweden  and 


Arthur  Young  205 

Russia  in  search  of  information;  and  wrote  a 
History  of  the  Revenue;  and  became  a  Member 
of  Parliament.     He  began,  in   1791,  to  publish 
a  book  of  great  value,  the  Statistical  Account  of 
Scotland.     He  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  person 
to  introduce  the  word  "statistical"  into  English; 
and  this  book,  a  collection  of  reports  from  the 
ministers   of   all  the   Scottish   parishes,   was   of 
great  importance  at  a  time  when  people  did  not 
even   know  for  certain  whether  population  was 
increasing  or  declining.     Sinclair,  in   1793,  per- 
suaded Pitt  to  start  the  "Board  of  Agriculture." 
Arthur  Young  had  bet  the  nineteen   volumes  of 
his  Annals  against  the  twenty-one  of  Sinclair's 
Statistical  Account  that  Pitt  would  not  consent.1 
He  lost  the  bet,  to  his  great  satisfaction;    for 
though  the  Minister   would  only  allow   £3000  a 
year,  Young  was  made  secretary  with  a  salary  of 
£400.      Now,  with  the  help  of  Sinclair,  he  could 
set  to  work  and,  on  however  modest  a  scale, 
Government  would  at  last  set  about  producing 
those  two  blades  of  grass.     Their  first  aim  was  to 
do  in  England  what  Sinclair  had  done  in  Scotland. 
The  English  clergy  were  to  be  asked  to  rival  the 
Scottish  ministers.     But  here  occurred  a  significant 

»  A  brief  and  interesting  History  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture 
has  just  been  published  by  Sir  Ernest  Clarke,  secretary  to  the, 
Royal  Agricultural  Society. 


206         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

difficulty.  One  of  Young's  pet  theories  was  that 
tithes  were  an  intolerable  burthen  to  agriculture. 
He  would  not  confiscate  them,  but  would  commute 
them  for  an  increase  of  glebe.  The  English 
clergy,  he  explains,  had  so  little  to  do  that  they 
naturally  took  to  dancing  and  sporting,  if  not  to 
still  less  decorous  pursuits.  Agriculture  was  the 
natural  employment  for  them,  as,  indeed,  it  was 
the  ideal  occupation  for  every  one.  The  clergy, 
however,  suspected,  not  unnaturally,  that  gentle- 
men of  these  views  might  be  insidiously  attacking 
the  tithes,  and  would  probably  be  putting  awk- 
ward questions.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
protested ;  and  the  Board  had  to  be  less  inquisitive, 
and  confined  itself  in  this  direction  to  publishing 
a  number  of  reports  upon  the  agriculture  of 
counties.  They  tried,  however,  to  promote  their 
grand  object  by  other  means.  The  worthy 
Sinclair  once  made  a  joke — not,  it  is  true,  of  the 
first  water;  but  still,  as  it  was  only  his  joke,  he 
naturally  repeated  it  as  often  as  possible.  This 
was  to  give  as  a  toast,  "May  commons  become 
uncommon!"  He  fully  shared  Young's  mania. 
What  is  the  use,  he  would  inquire,  of  conquering 
colonies?  Let  us  first  conquer  Finchley  Common, 
and  compel  Epping  Forest  to  "  submit  to  the  yoke 
of  improvement."  His  son  claims  for  him  the 
merit  of  actually  making  the  suggestion  which  led 


Arthur  Young  207 

to  the  enclosure  of  Hounslow  Heath.  With  all 
their  energy,  Sinclair  and  Young  could  never 
persuade  Parliament  to  pass  a  General  Enclosure 
Bill;  but  they  claimed  to  have  facilitated  the 
process  which  went  on  so  rapidly  in  their  time. 
The  common  field  system,  the  source  of  all 
slovenly  agriculture  according  to  him,  was  very 
rapidly  broken  up.  Meanwhile,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
the  Board  became  rather  a  nuisance.  It  was  a 
rather  anomalous  body,  with  no  very  definite 
functions;  and  it  went  about  like  an  intrusive 
busybody,  trying  to  stir  up  people  in  general  by 
every  means  in  its  power.  It  offered  premiums 
for  inventions,  and  encouraged  scientific  writers 
to  give  lectures  and  produce  books,  and  held 
meetings  where  good  agriculturists  might  make 
each  other's  acquaintance;  but  it  is  said  to  have 
ultimately  become  a  kind  of  political  debating 
society,  and  finally  expired  (1822)  two  years  after 
Young's  death.  In  spite  of  their  agreement  upon 
the  main  point,  Young  soon  found  the  chief  of  the 
new  board  to  be  far  from  congenial.  Sinclair  was 
a  pushing,  self-seeking  person,  stingy  in  money 
matters,  industrious  in  the  wrong  direction,  and 
as  anxious  to  establish  his  own  claims  as  to 
promote  the  true  interests  of  agriculture.  Young 
was  relieved  when  for  a  time  Sinclair  was  super- 
seded. He  returned  to  be  tried,  however,  "  under 


208          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

promises  of  good  behaviour,"  at  a  time  (1805) 
when  Young  was  threatened  with  blindness  and 
falling  into  melancholy. 

Sinclair  about  1810  returned  to  Scotland,  where 
he  got  a  good  appointment  and  leisure  for  liberally 
bestowing  his  tediousness  upon  his  countrymen 
and  the  world.  He  got  up  Highland  games; 
promoted  the  use  of  the  bagpipes,  and  defended 
the  authenticity  of  Ossian.  He  gave  advice  to 
Scott  in  literary  matters.  He  expounded  his 
opinions  in  numerous  pamphlets — his  son  gives 
a  list  of  367  of  these  productions, — and,  finding 
the  employment  insufficient,  spent  his  spare  time 
in  composing  four  gigantic  cyclopaedias,  which 
were  to  codify  all  human  knowledge  upon  health, 
agriculture,  religion,  and  political  economy.  The 
first  two  alone  were  published,  and  I  confess  that 
I  have  not  read  nor  even  seen  them.  It  appears, 
however,  from  The  Edinburgh  Review  (October 
1807)  that  the  first  fills  four  volumes  of  800 
closely  printed  pages  apiece;  marked,  as  the 
reviewer  asserts,  in  the  good  old  style,  by  "in- 
distinctness," "incredible  credulity,"  "mawkish 
morality,"  "marvellous  ignorance,"  and  a  "dis- 
play of  the  most  diffuse,  clumsy,  and  superficial 
reasoning."  The  reviewer  gives  as  specimens 
Sinclair's  remarks  upon  the  advantage  of  taking 
butter  with  fish;  and  his  proof  that,  although  the 


Arthur  Young  209 

stomach  is  an  organ  not  remarkable  for  external 
elegance,  it  not  the  less  requires  careful  attention 
in  consequence  of  its  delicate  structure.  Sinclair 
probably  opposed  a  good  solid  stolidity  to  this 
heartless  levity.  He  proposed  that  his  work 
should  be  translated  into  the  principal  languages 
of  Europe,  and  promised  that  it  should  add  from 
ten  to  thirty  years  to  the  life  of  every  attentive 
reader.  Apparently  he  had  the  reward  appro- 
priate to  gentle  dulness,  for  it  is  said  that  five 
editions  were  sold — a  sufficient  answer  to  any 
review.  Sinclair  survived  till  1835. 

Meanwhile  Arthur  Young  had  a  more  pathetic 
end.  His  secretaryship  had  taken  him  to  London. 
There  his  handsome  presence  and  open-hearted, 
cordial  ways  made  him  acceptable  in  society,  which 
he  heartily  enjoyed.  But  his  life  was  cruelly 
darkened.  He  was  tenderly  attached  to  his 
youngest  daughter  "Bobbin,"  to  whom,  in  her 
infancy,  he  wrote  pleasant  little  letters,  and  whom 
he  never  forgot  in  his  travels.  "I  have  more 
pleasure,"  he  says  at  the  end  of  his  first  tour  in 
France,  "in  giving  my  little  girl  a  French  doll 
than  in  viewing  Versailles,"  and  "viewing  Ver- 
sailles" was  not  small  pleasure  to  him.  Her  death 
in  1797  struck  a  blow  after  which  he  never  quite 
recovered  his  cheerfulness.  His  friends  thought 
that  a  blindness  which  soon  followed  was  due  to 

VOL.  I.  — 14 


2io         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

"excess  of  weeping."  I  do  not  know  whether 
physicians  would  regard  this  as  a  possible  cause  of 
cataract.  An  operation  for  this  disease  was  per- 
formed eleven  years  later,  and  recovery  promised 
on  condition  of  calmness.  Wilberforce,  coming 
to  see  him,  told  him  of  the  death  of  the  Duke  of 
Graf  ton,  now  chiefly  remembered  by  the  abuse 
of  Junius.  The  Duke,  however,  became  serious 
in  his  later  years,  and  was  one  of  Young's 
improving  landlords.  Anyhow,  the  news,  or 
Wilberforce's  comments,  provoked  a  burst  of 
tears  which  was  fatal  to  Young's  hopes  of  recovery. 
He  retired  to  his  native  village,  and  sought  for 
consolation  in  religious  practices.  He  had  upon 
the  loss  of  his  daughter  studied  religious  books 
for  sixteen  or  seventeen  hours  a  day,  and  had  been 
profoundly  affected  by  Wilberforce's  Practical 
View  of  Christianity.  As  he  was  forced  to  retire 
from  business,  he  became  a  more  zealous  disciple 
and  tried  to  propagate  his  faith.  He  published 
little  selections  from  the  works  of  Baxter  and 
Owen,  and  preached  on  Sunday  evenings  in  a 
hall  at  Bradfield.  "There  is  still  living  (1889)  a 
nonagenarian  at  Bradfield,"  writes  Miss  Betham, 
"who  remembers  his  sermons."  The  blind  old 
man  "would  get  his  back  turned  to  his  audience, 
and  have  to  be  put  straight  by  his  daughter  and 
secretary."  He  still  worked  at  his  favourite 


Arthur  Young  211 

pursuit,  and  left  ten  folio  volumes  in  manuscript 
of  a  History  of  Agriculture.  He  died  April  20, 
1820.  The  nonagenarian  of  1889  is  by  this  time, 
if  he  survives,  probably  a  centenarian;  but  it  is 
curious  to  reflect  that  we  have  still  among  us  men 
of  active  minds  whose  careers  overlap  Young's. 
His  enthusiasm  refers  to  a  strangely  altered  state 
of  things.  What  he  would  think  of  the  present 
state  of  England,  of  modern  London,  of  the 
imports  of  tea,  of  the  growth  of  population,  and 
of  agricultural  depression,  it  is  needless  to  con- 
jecture. No  doubt  he  would  admit  that  some 
of  his  predictions  have  turned  out  badly,  but  he 
would  perhaps  hold  not  the  less  that  he  was  right 
in  making  them.  The  short-sightedness  of  the 
most  intelligent  observers  suggests  comfort  when 
one  studies  some  modern  prophets. 


Wordsworth's  Youth1 

A  FRENCH  critic,  M.  Emile  Legouis,  has 
/V  written  a  singularly  interesting  study  of 
Wordsworth's  youth.  Of  M.  Legouis 's  general 
qualifications,  it  need  only  be  said  that  he  has  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  English  literature,  and  a 
minute  acquaintance  with  all  the  special  literature 
bearing  upon  Wordsworth's  early  career.  He 
fully  appreciates  the  qualities  which,  though 
they  have  endeared  Wordsworth's  poetry  to  his 
own  countrymen,  have  hardly  made  him  one  of  the 
cosmopolitan  poets.  I  do  not,  however,  propose 
to  say  anything  of  Wordsworth's  general  merits. 
M.  Legouis 's  study  is  concerned  with  one  stage 
in  Wordsworth's  development.  Wordsworth  was 
in  France  at  the  crisis  of  the  Revolution,  and 
there,  as  we  know  from  The  Prelude,  became  the 
enthusiastic  admirer  of  Michel  Beaupuy,  after- 
wards a  general  and  an  incarnation  of  republican 
virtue.  Wordsworth  compares  him  to  Dion  as 
the  philosophic  assailant  of  a  tyrant.2  M.  Legouis 

1  La  Jeunesse  de  Wordsworth.     Par  Emile  Legouis.     Paris, 
1896.     An  English  translation  appeared  in  1897. 
5  See  Wordsworth's  poem  upon  Dion,  written  1816. 

212 


Wordsworth's  Youth  213 

has  already  given  an  account  of  Beaupuy,1  and 
has  now  pointed  out  the  nature  of  his  influence 
upon  his  young  English  disciple. 

Browning's  Lost  Leader  represented  a  view 
of  Wordsworth  which  seemed  strange  to  most 
readers.  The  name  of  Wordsworth  had  come 
to  suggest  belief  in  the  Thirty-nine  Articles, 
capital  punishment,  and  rotten  boroughs.  Some 
of  us  can  still  remember  the  venerable  grey  head 
bowed  in  the  little  church  at  Grasmere,  and  typi- 
fying complete  acquiescence  in  orthodox  tradition. 
This  "  lost  leader, "  however,  had  once  defended  the 
principles  of  Paine's  Rights  of  Man;  had  con- 
demned the  crusade  against  the  Revolution  as 
a  great  national  crime;  and,  so  far  from  be- 
ing orthodox,  had  been  described  by  his  inti- 
mate friend  Coleridge  as  a  "semi-atheist."  How 
was  this  brand  snatched  from  the  burning,  or 
what,  as  others  will  say,  led  to  this  lamentable 
apostasy?  There  is,  of  course,  no  question  of 
moral  blame.  As  Browning  observes,  the  real 
Wordsworth  was  certainly  not  seduced  by  a  "bit 
of  ribbon . "  His  change  of  attitude  only  suggested 
in  a  general  way  the  theme  of  the  poem.  But  a 
fair  account  of  the  way  in  which  his  change 
actually  came  about  is  interesting,  both  as  ex- 

>  Le  General  Michel  Beaupuy.  Par  G.  Buissteres  et  6mile 
Legouis.  Paris,  1891. 


214          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

plaining  some  of  his  literary  tendencies  and  as 
illustrating  a  similar  change  in  many  of  his 
contemporaries.  Such  an  account  may  naturally 
be  sought  in  Wordsworth's  autobiographical 
poem,  Tlie  Prelude,  and  there,  indeed,  it  is  im- 
plicitly given.  Yet  its  significance  is  brought 
out  by  M.  Legouis's  careful  study  of  the  poem 
in  connection  with  other  documents  and  some 
of  the  earlier  writings.  M.  Legouis  has,  I  think, 
thrown  new  light  upon  the  whole  process;  and 
in  what  I  have  to  say  I  shall  be  mainly  following 
his  lead,  though  I  may  be  making  a  slightly 
different  estimate  of  certain  elements  of  the 
question. 

The  Prelude,  though  it  gives  the  clue,  has  one 
characteristic  which  obscures  the  self -revelation. 
Wordsworth  describes  facts  till  some  of  his 
readers  are  sick  of  them.  Still,  a  fact  is  for 
him  mainly  a  peg  upon  which  to  hang  some 
poetical  or  philosophical  conclusion.  When,  for 
example,  he  is  crossing  the  Simplon,  he  supposes 
— rather  oddly,  it  seems  to  an  Alpine  traveller — 
that  the  path  is  inviting  him  to  "ascend  a  lofty 
mountain."  A  peasant,  luckily,  informs  him  that 
he  has  crossed  the  Alps  already,  and  must  go 
down  hill  thenceforwards.  This  remark  does  not 
(in  the  poem  at  least)  suggest  a  prospect  of  dinner, 
but  a  series  of  reflections  upon  "  that  awful  power" 


Wordsworth's  Youth  215 

Imagination.  It  convinces,  or  reminds,  him  that 
"  our  being's  "  heart  and  home 

Is  with  infinitude  and  only  there. 

When  a  trivial  incident  starts  a  man  at  once  upon 
such  distant  reveries,  serving  as  a  mere  taking-off 
place  for  a  flight  into  the  clouds,  we  see  that  we 
must  not  count  upon  definite,  concrete  informa- 
tion. We  pass  at  a  bound  from  the  common 
earth  into  a  world  lying  beyond  political  or 
historical  circumstance.  Even  when  he  speaks 
not  of  external  facts,  but  of  the  history  of  his  own 
opinions,  he  generally  plunges  into  generalities  so 
wide  that  their  precise  application  is  not  very  easy 
to  discover.  We  can  see  that  Wordsworth  was 
deeply  moved  by  the  Revolution,  but  the  reflec- 
tions stirred  in  him  are  beyond,  or  beneath,  any 
tangible  political  issue.  They  seem  at  first  sight 
as  if  they  might  be  adopted  with  equal  facility 
by  men  of  all  political  creeds.  If  a  man  tells 
us  that  morality  is,  on  the  whole,  a  good  thing, 
we  cannot  infer  whether  he  thinks  this  or  that 
political  institution  moral.  Between  the  gener- 
al truth  and  the  particular  application  there 
are  certain  "middle  axioms"  which  Wordsworth 
leaves  us  to  supply  for  ourselves.  And,  in  fact, 
to  follow  his  sentiments  about  the  Revolution,  we 
must  fill  in  a  good  deal  that  is  not  directly  stated. 


216          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

The  generalities  have  to  be  clothed  in  circumstance. 
To  understand  Wordsworth  himself  we  must 
seek  to  reproduce  him  in  the  concrete.  What 
manner  of  man  was  this  youth  in  the  first  flush 
of  enthusiasm?  Wordsworth  tells  us  how  he 
came  to  Cambridge,  "and  at  The  Hoop  alighted, 
famous  inn!"  We  can  guess  pretty  well  how 
the  freshman  then  impressed  his  tutor,  or  the 
"chattering  popinjays"  wThom  men  called  fellow- 
commoners.  He  was,  he  says,  a  "stripling  of  the 
hills,  a  Northern  villager,"  and  probably  uncouth 
enough,  even  in  the  powdered  hair  and  silk 
stockings  which  he  commemorates.  The  type 
is  familiar  to  all  Cambridge  men.  Paley  and 
Bishop  Watson  had  represented  it  in  the  previous 
generation.  A  long  procession  of  hard-headed 
North-countrymen  came  up  from  the  grammar- 
schools  of  their  district,  and  were  among  the 
toughest  competitors  in  the  tripos.  Wordsworth, 
no  doubt,  looked  like  a  senior  wrangler  in  em- 
bryo. He  had  not,  indeed,  the  special  taste 
for  mathematics.  There  is  an  entry,  it  is  said, 
in  one  of  the  Cambridge  registers  about  a  youth 
who  applied  for  admission:  sed,  Euclide  viso, 
cohorruit  et  evasit.  Wordsworth  did  not  pre- 
cisely adopt  that  course;  but  he  neglected  his 
Euclid,  and  took  to  learning  Italian  and  reading 
Spenser.  His  poetical  genius,  however,  was  not 


Wordsworth's  Youth  217 

revealed  to  others,  and  not  shown  by  the  ordinary 
symptoms.  He  was  not,  like  Coleridge,  who  was 
to  follow  him  to  Cambridge,  sensitive,  emotional, 
and  sentimental.  However  strong  his  feelings, 
he  was  stern  and  little  given  to  expansive  ut- 
terance. He  formed  no  intimate  friendships. 
Proud  independence  and  power  of  standing  on 
his  own  sturdy  legs  would  be  his  most  con- 
spicuous qualities,  and  went  naturally  with  the 
outside  of  a  country  bumpkin.  His  boyhood 
had  stimulated  these  tendencies.  He  had  been 
happy  at  his  school  at  Hawkshead,  and  had 
found  congenial  masters;  but  their  great  merit 
had  been  that  they  had  cared  nothing  for  modern 
methods  of  drill  and  competition.  They  had  left 
him  free  to  take  long  rambles  over  the  fells, 
scampers  upon  ponies,  birds '-nesting  expeditions, 
and  skating  parties  on  the  frozen  lakes.  He  had 
neither  been  trimmed  into  a  model  boy  nor  forced 
into  rebellion,  but  had  grown  up  after  his  own 
fashion.  The  early  death  of  his  parents  had 
thrown  him  still  more  upon  his  own  resources, 
and  detached  him  from  any  close  domestic  ties. 
Every  Englishman  is  an  island,  it  is  said,  and 
Wordsworth  was  thoroughly  insular  or  self- 
contained  by  temperament  and  circumstance. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  in  thorough  harmony 
with  his  social  surroundings.  He  was  on  the 


2 1 8          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

friendliest  terms  with  the  old  mistress  of  the 
dame-school,  the  "statesmen,"  and  the  country 
parsons  of  the  district,  whom  he  has  idealised 
in  his  poetry.  Wordsworth,  in  short,  was  as 
thorough  a  representative  of  the  Cumbrian  type 
as  Scott  of  the  Scottish  borderers,  though  with 
a  characteristic  difference.  He  never  cared,  as 
he  remarks  in  The  Prelude,  for  history  or  tradi- 
tion. While  Scott's  memory  had  recorded  every 
legend  and  song  connected  with  his  beloved  hills, 
Wordsworth  was  curiously  indifferent  to  all  the 
charm  of  historical  association.  He  loved  the 
lakes  and  mountains,  it  might  seem,  for  their 
own  sakes,  not  for  the  local  heroes  whose  fame 
was  accidentally  connected  writh  them.  But  he 
had  not  the  less  imbibed  the  spirit  of  his  own 
district;  and  loved  the  Pillar  or  Scawfell,  if  not 
as  the  scene  of  any  particular  events,  yet  as  the 
natural  guardian  of  the  social  order  from  which 
he  sprang.  This,  again,  had  predisposed  him  to 
a  kind  of  old-fashioned  republicanism.  At  this 
period,  indeed,  he  wras  still  unconscious  of  the 
true  nature  of  his  owTn  feelings.  He  thought, 
he  says,  at  this  time,  of  nature,  not  of  man.  But 
he  tells  us,  too,  how  when  he  went  to  France  he 
was  a  republican  already,  because  he  had  been 
brought  up  in  a  homely  district  where  he  had 


Wordsworth's  Youth  219 

never  seen  a  man  of  rank  or  wealth,  and  how, 
even  at  Cambridge,  with  all  its  faults,  he  had 
found  a  community  in  which  men  were  respected 
for  their  own  character  and  abilities,  and  all 
"scholars  and  gentlemen"  regarded  as  equals. 
At  Cambridge,  it  is  true,  Wordsworth  seems  to 
have  been  amused  rather  than  edified  by  the  dons 
of  his  time,  the  queer  old  humorists  and  port 
wine  drinking  bachelors,  who  ought  to  have  been 
described  by  Charles  Lamb.  Wordsworth  passes 
them  by,  observing  only  that  he  compared  them 
— with  what  results  does  not  appear — to  his  own 
"shepherd  swains."  M.  Legouis  has  formed  a 
low — I  am  afraid  not  too  low — estimate  of  the 
intellectual  position  of  Cambridge  in  those  days. 
It  may,  however,  be  noticed  that  there  was  a 
certain  stir  in  the  minds  of  its  inhabitants  even 
then ;  Cambridge  held  itself  to  be  the  Whig  uni- 
versity, studying  Locke  and  despising  the  Aristo- 
telian logic  of  Oxford.  One  symptom  was  the 
development  of  certain  free-thinking  tendencies, 
and  the  proceedings  against  Frend  for  avowing 
Unitarianism  were  rousing  an  excitement  which 
soon  afterwards  led  Coleridge  into  some  trouble. 
Young  men,  therefore,  who  aimed  at  enlighten- 
ment, as  clever  young  men  ought  to  do,  were 
not  without  temptations  to  break  bounds. 


220          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

Especially  the  uncouth  young  Cumberland  student, 

Child  of  the  mountains,  among  shepherds  reared, 
despising  the  stupid  old  dons  with  their  mechanical 
disciplines,  conscious  of  great  abilities,  though  not 
yet  conscious  of  their  proper  aim,  was  disposed  to 
cast  the  dust  off  his  shoes  and  strike  out  a  path  of 
his  own. 

What  it  was  to  be,  did  not  appear  for  some  time. 
His  unsympathetic  guardians  naturally  wanted  him 
to  settle  to  a  profession,  and  their  desire  was,  if 
anything,  a  reason  for  going  against  it.  To  be- 
come a  clergyman  or  a  tutor  was  his  only  apparent 
chance,  and  yet  either  position  involved  concession, 
if  not  absolute  subservience,  to  commonplaces 
and  respectability.  For  some  years,  accordingly, 
Wordsworth  lived  what  he  calls  an  "undomestic 
wanderer's  life."  Travelling  was  congenial  to  his 
state  of  mind.  A  youth  rambling  with  a  knap- 
sack on  his  back  and  a  few  pounds  in  his  pocket 
can  enjoy  a  sense  of  independence  of  the  most  ex- 
quisitely delightful  kind.  Wordsworth,  before 
leaving  Cambridge,  had  managed  a  tour  in  the 
Alps,  and  afterwards  spent  some  time  in  London. 
He  was  equally  in  both  cases  a  looker-on.  The 
Swiss  tour  prompted  a  poem  which  (with  the 
previous  Evening  Walk)  shows  that  he  was  still  in 
search  of  himself.  He  already  shows  his  minute  and 
first-hand  observance  of  nature,  but  the  form  and 


Wordsworth's  Youth  221 

the  sentiment  are  imitative  and  partly  fictitious. 
He  is  working  the  vein  of  Beattie's  Minstrel  and 
Goldsmith's  Traveller;  with  some  impulse,  per- 
haps, from  Rousseau.  M.  Legouis  observes  very 
truly  that  the  sentimental  sadness  which  he  thinks 
proper  to  affect  is  in  odd  contrast  with  the  hearty 
enjoyment  betrayed  in  a  letter  of  the  same  period 
to  his  sister.  The  Swiss  tour  took  him  through 
France  during  the  early  enthusiasm  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  his  sympathy  was  the  natural  expansion 
of  the  crude  republicanism  of  the  Cumberland 
shepherd  and  Cambridge  undergraduate.  His 
London  experience  is  characteristic.  He  is  essen- 
tially the  countryman  wondering  at  the  metropolis. 
In  the  seventh  book  of  The  Prelude  he  gives  a  list 
of  all  the  sights  which  bewildered  him,  from  Burke 
in  the  House  of  Commons  and  Mrs.  Siddons  on  the 
stage,  down  to  waxworks  and  blind  beggars  in  the 
streets  and  shameless  women  using  bad  language 
in  public-houses.  He  passes  from  his  quaint  bits 
of  prose — unconsciously  humorous — to  pathetic 
and  elevating  thoughts.  But  the  spectacle  passes 
before  him  without  involving  him ;  he  has  no  talks, 
like  Coleridge's,  at  the  Cat  and  Salutation  to  re- 
cord ;  he  picks  up  no  chums  and  joins  no  clubs ; 
his  proper  position  is  that  of  the  famous  sonnet  on 
Westminster  Bridge,  when  he  alone  wakes  and 
meditates  on  the  "mighty  heart"  that  is  "lying 


222          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

stiEL"  London  is  part  of  that  vast  machinery, 
including  the  universe  in  general,  of  which  it  some- 
times seems  to  be  the  final  cause  that  it  is  to  mould 
the  central  object,  William  Wordsworth.  It 
suggests  to  him,  for  a  wonder,  that  there  are  other 
people  in  the  world  besides  himself.  It  impresses 
upon  him,  in  his  own  words,  "  the  unity  of  man." 
As  he  approaches  on  his  "itinerant  vehicle" — a 
coach  to  wit — "  a  weight  of  ages  "  descends  at  once 
upon  "his  heart."  He  becomes  aware,  shall  we 
say,  that,  besides  the  mountains  and  the  lakes, 
there  is  a  vast  drama  of  human  joy  and  suffering 
constantly  developing  itself,  and  that,  though  he 
still  looks  upon  it  from  the  outside,  it  means  a 
great  process  in  which  he  is  to  play  his  part — if 
only  he  can  find  his  appropriate  function. 

This  brings  us  to  Wordsworth's  important  visit 
to  France  in  1791.  He  went  there,  it  seems,  on 
some  vague  pretext  that  a  knowledge  of  the  lan- 
guage might  qualify  him  for  a  tutorship.  His  re- 
volutionary fervour  was  still  comparatively  mild. 
He  picked  up  a  stone  on  the  site  of  the  Bastille, 
"in  guise  of  an  enthusiast,"  but "  in  honest  truth," 
he  affected  "more  emotion  than  he  felt,"  and  was 
more  moved  by  the  sight  of  Le  Brim's  "Magda- 
lene" than  by  relics  of  the  great  events.  Passing 
on  to  Orleans,  however,  he  made  acquaintance 
with  some  officers,  and  among  them  with  Beaupuy , 


Wordsworth's  Youth  223 

upon  whom  his  comrades  of  loyalist  sympathies 
turned  a  cold  shoulder.  Wordsworth  soon  at- 
tached himself  to  Beaupuy,  and  one  main  secret  of 
their  sympathy  is  revealed  in  an  anecdote.  They 
met  a  "hunger-bitten  girl"  leading  a  heifer  by  a 
cord  tied  to  her  arm,  while  she  was  "  knitting  in  a 
heartless  mood  of  solitude."  "  T  is  against  that 
that  we  are  fighting,"  said  his  friend.  Words- 
worth took  the  Revolution  to  mean  the  destruction 
of  "abject  poverty"  by  the  abolition  of  exclusive 
privileges  and  the  elevation  of  human  beings  in- 
trusted with  power  over  their  own  lives.  He 
caught  the  contagion  of  the  patriotic  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  French  rose  to  meet  their  invaders 
in  1792.  He  became  so  hearty  a  sympathiser  that 
he  was  almost  inclined  to  join  in  some  active  move- 
ment, and  might,  he  remarks,  have  ended  his  career 
by  the  guillotine.  He  was  forced,  probably  by  stress 
of  money,  to  return  to  England,  passing  through 
Paris  soon  after  the  September  massacres;  and 
might  have  said  afterwards,  as  Bolingbroke  said  to 
Atterbury,  that  he  was  being  exchanged  for  Paine, 
who  had  just  crossed  in  the  opposite  direction. 
So  far  Wordsworth's  case  was  not  peculiar.  He 
shared  the  sentiments  of  most  generous  and  in- 
telligent young  men  at  the  dawn  of  a  new  era. 

Bliss  was  it  at  that  time  to  be  afive, 
But  to  be  young  was  very  Heaven! 


224         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

He  had  not  to  part  from  early  convictions,  but 
simply  to  develop  his  old  feelings :  to  diffuse  more 
widely,  as  he  puts  it,  the  affections  which  had 
"grown  up  with  him  from  the  cradle."  His 
ready-made  republicanism  did  not  clash  as  yet 
with  his  patriotism.  Rather  the  two  principles 
were  in  harmony.  The  good  old  conviction  that 
Britons  never  would  be  slaves,  like  the  wretched 
beings  who  wore  wooden  shoes  and  had  never 
heard  of  trial  by  jury,  was  enough  to  bear  him 
out.  It  only  wanted  to  be  mellowed  by  a  little 
philosophy  and  wider  humanity.  The  poor  girl 
towing  her  heifer  was  to  be  raised  to  the  level  of 
the  hearty  young  Cumberland  lasses  with  whom 
he  had  danced  and  flirted.  The  clumsy  story  of 
Vaudracour  and  Julia,  derived,  it  seems,  from 
Beaupuy's  illustrations  of  the  arbitrary  tyranny 
of  the  French  noblesse,  could  be  told  without 
suggesting  any  English  parallel.  It  is  true  that 
Wordsworth  had  realised  in  the  case  of  Lord 
Lowther  how  difficult  it  might  be  to  force  a  great 
English  noble  to  pay  his  just  debts.  But  even 
Lord  Lowther  could  not  imprison  his  dependants  by 
a  lettre  de  cachet  or  make  Cumberland  peasants  pay 
crushing  taxes  and  flog  the  meres  at  night  to  silence 
the  frogs.  All  that  was  wanted  at  home  was  to 
put  down  jobbery  and  rotten  boroughs;  and  if 
reform  was  desired,  there  was  not  in  Wordsworth's 


Wordsworth's  Youth  225 

class  at  any  rate  any  accumulated  mass  of  palpable 
tyranny  to  give  rancour  to  the  demand,  or  mingle 
it  with  a  thirst  for  revenge.  The  Whiggism  of 
Fox  or  Sheridan,  in  his  view  as  in  theirs,  implied 
sympathy  with  the  French  Revolution  so  long  as 
the  Revolution  could  be  regarded  merely  as  an 
application  of  Mr.  Locke's  principles  and  a  copy 
of  our  glorious  achievement  of  1688. 

Wordsworth,  however,  had  to  discover,  like 
his  contemporaries,  that  the  millennium  was  not 
to  come  so  cheaply.  The  English  war  with  France 
and  the  Reign  of  Terror  in  France  roused  a  painful 
conflict  of  feeling.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
Wordsworth  was  alienated  from  the  Revolution, 
not  by  the  horrors  of  1793,  but  by  his  patriotic 
sentiment.  He  could  pardon  the  Jacobins  for 
their  crimes  in  France,  but  not  for  opposing 
British  interests.  A  closer  observation  shows 
that  this  partly  misrepresents  the  facts.  The  war, 
indeed,  as  Wordsworth  tells  us,  first  broke  up 
his  placid  optimism.  He  was  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight  in  1793,  listened  with  painful  forebodings 
to  the  sunset  gun,  and  watched  the  fleet  gather- 
ing to  join  in  "  the  unworthy  service"  of  sup- 
pressing liberty  abroad.  He  even  "exulted,"  he 
tells  us,  when  the  first  attempts  of  Englishmen 
to  resist  the  revolutionary  armies  met  with  shame- 
ful defeat;  and  sat  gloomily  in  church  when 


VOL,  1.— IS 


226         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

prayers  were  offered  for  victory,  feeding  on  the 
day  of  vengeance  yet  to  come.  Some  people 
were  cosmopolitan  enough  to  find  no  difficulty  in 
suppressing  patriotic  compunctions;  but  Words- 
-  worth,  solitary  and  recluse  as  he  was,  was  pene- 
trated to  the  core  by  the  sentiments  of  which 
patriotism  is  the  natural  growth.  He  only,  he 
says,  who  "  loves  the  sight  of  a  village  steeple  as  I 
do  "  can  judge  of  "  the  conflict  of  sensations  without 
name"  with  which  he  joined  such  congregations. 
His  private  and  public  sympathies  were  now 
clashing  in  the  cruelest  way.  Meanwhile,  he  felt 
the  taunts  of  those  who  were  echoing  Madame 
Roland's  cry,  "  0  liberty,  what  crimes  are  com- 
mitted in  thy  name!"  It  was  well  that  the 
infant  republic  had  "  throttled  the  snakes  about 
its  cradle"  with  the  might  of  a  Hercules;  but  his 
soul  was  sick  at  thought  of  the  odium  that  was 
being  incurred  by  liberty.  His  thoughts  by  day 
were  " most  melancholy, "  and  "for  months  and 
years,  after  the  last  beat  of  those  atrocities,"  he 
could  not  sleep  without  hideous  nightmares  of 
cruel  massacre  and  vain  pleadings  in  unjust  tribu- 
nals. The  argument  from  atrocities,  however, 
though  the  most  popular,  was  ambiguous.  Words- 
worth had  been  profoundly  affected  by  the  Sep- 
tember massacres  when  passing  through  Paris  on 
his  return;  but  he  could  still  argue  that  such 


Wordsworth's  Youth  227 

crimes  were  the  natural  fruit  of  the  ignorance 
and  misery  of  the  people  under  the  old  system, 
and  that  when  the  wretches  who  had  seized  upon 
power  were  suppressed,  the  true  reign  of  peace 
and  reason  would  begin.  The  hope  seemed  to 
be  justified  by  the  fall  of  Robespierre  (July,  1794), 
and  Wordsworth  describes  minutely  how  he 
heard  the  news  in  Morecambe  Bay ;  what  ecstasy 
it  caused  him,  and  how  he  now  called  upon  the 
"  golden  times  "  to  appear.  It  became  sufficiently 
clear,  however,  that,  whatever  else  was  to  happen, 
the  new  rulers  of  France  were  not  to  be  pure 
philanthropists,  propagating  a  gospel  of  humanity 
by  peaceful  means.  The  French,  he  began  to 
fear,  were  changing  a  war  of  self-defence  for  one 
of  conquest.  Yet  he  stuck  resolutely  to  his 
opinions  as  long  as  he  could.  He  adhered  "more 
firmly  to  old  tenets  "—that  is,  to  his  revolutionary 
creed— tried  to  "hide  the  wounds  of  mortified 
presumption,"  and,  in  fact,  had  to  construct  a 
theory  to  show  that  he  had  been  right  all  along. 
Such  theories  are  essential  to  one's  comfort,  but 
sometimes  troublesome  to  construct.  "Opinions," 
as  he  put  it,  grew  "into  consequence,"  and  for 
instinctive  sympathy  he  wished  to  substitute  a 
reasoned  system  of  principles. 

Wordsworth  was  thus  set  down  to  a  problem, 
and    his    solution    was    characteristic.     In   such 


228         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

mental  crises  the  real  process  of  decision  is  often 
very  different  from  that  of  which  the  subject  of 
the  process  is  himself  conscious.  He  fancies,  in 
all  sincerity,  that  he  is  considering  a  logical  or 
philosophical  question.  He  is  asking  whether 
reason,  impartially  consulted,  will  order  him  to 
accept  one  or  the  other  of  two  conflicting  sys- 
tems; though  hoping  that  it  will  enable  him  to 
decide  at  the  smallest  possible  cost  to  his  belief 
in  his  own  consistency.  He  would  prefer  a  theory 
which  would  enable  him  to  think  that  the  opin- 
ions which  he  has  to  abandon  represent  a  merely 
superficial  aberration.  But  this  may  practically 
come  to  asking  what  are  his  own  strongest  feelings, 
and  assuming  that  they  represent  eternal  truths. 
Wordsworth  supposed  himself  to  be  asking  simply, 
What  is  the  true  philospohy  of  the  political  creeds 
at  issue?  He  was  unconsciously  asking,  On  what 
side  are  my  really  deepest  sympathies  ?  The  last 
question  might  be  put  thus:  A  Cumberland 
"statesman"  could  develop  into  a  Girondin  (or 
what  he  took  to  be  a  Girondin)  by  simply  widen- 
ing his  sympathies.  That  might  be  a  case  of 
natural  development,  involving  no  shock  or 
laceration  of  old  ties ;  but,  could  he  continue  the 
process  and  grow  into  a  Jacobin?  That  involved 
a  strain  upon  his  patriotism,  painful  but  not 
absolutely  coercive.  He  could  manage  to  desire 


Wordsworth's  Youth  229 

the  defeat  of  British  armies,  and  all  the  more 
readily  when  the  British  Government  was  alienat- 
ing him  by  trying  to  suppress  freedom  of  thought 
and  language  at  home.  Still,  this  position  re- 
quired an  effort ;  and  another  trial  was  behind  it. 
Could  the  "statesman  "  sympathise  with  men  who 
used  such  weapons  as  massacre  and  the  guillo- 
tine? To  that,  of  course,  there  could  be  only 
one  answer — Wordsworth  had  been  wayward 
and  independent,  but  never  a  rebel  against  society 
or  morality.  He  was  thoroughly  in  harmony 
with  the  simple,  homely  society  from  which  he 
sprang.  Violence  and  confiscation  were  abhor- 
rent to  him.  "  I  recoil,"  he  tells  a  friend  at  the 
time,  "from  the  very  idea  of  a  revolution.  I  am 
a  determined  enemy  to  every  species  of  violence." 
Lord  Lowther,  let  us  say,  should  be  made  to  pay 
his  debts  and  give  up  his  boroughs;  but  he  cer- 
tainly should  not  have  his  head  placed  on  the 
walls  of  Carlisle,  while  his  estates  were  divided 
among  the  peasantry.  Wordsworth,  however, 
could  still  hope  that  the  Terrorists  were  a  passing 
phenomenon,  an  "ephemeral  monster,"  as  he  puts 
it ;  and  was  still  firmly  persuaded  of  this  upon  the 
fall  of  Robespierre.  It  was,  however,  essential 
to  his  peace  of  mind  that  the  facts  should  confirm 
this  view:  and  that  the  French  people,  freed  from 
the  incubus,  should  show  themselves  clearly  in 


230         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

favour  of  peaceful  progress  at  home,  and  free 
from  thought  of  conquest  abroad. 

The  mental  crisis  thus  brought  about  is  indi- 
cated by  some  remarkable  writings.  Wordsworth 
had  been  provoked  to  an  utterance  of  his  sen- 
timents when  the  English  declaration  of  war 
was  stimulating  his  wrath.  Watson — who,  being 
Bishop  of  Llandaff  and  Professor  of  Divinity  at 
Cambridge,  passed  his  time  as  an  intelligent 
country  gentleman  at  Windermere — had  preached 
the  doctrine  that  every  Englishman  should  be 
thoroughly  contented  with  his  lot.  They  could 
not  all  be  non-resident  bishops,  but  they  had  no 
grievances  to  speak  of.  Wordsworth  hereupon 
wrote  a  letter  in  which  he  is,  at  least,  unmistaka- 
bly on  the  side  of  Paine  against  Burke.  He  had  at 
this  time  adopted  the  opinions  of  Beaupuy.  He 
objects  on  principle  to  monarchy  and  to  privileged 
orders  of  nobility.  At  most  it  may  to  said  that 
his  argument  is  not  so  much  that  of  the  theorist 
arguing  from  abstract  rights  as  of  the  indepen- 
dent Briton  who  will  not  humble  himself  to  a 
lord,  and  whose  republicanism  lesembles  Milton's 
rather  than  Rousseau's.  But  now,  when  he  was 
roused  by  later  developments  to  look  into  his 
first  principles,  he  found  himself  in  a  cruel  diffi- 
culty. In  the  first  place,  Wordsworth,  though  he 
was  a  philosophical  poet,  was  not  at  home  in 


Wordsworth's  Youth  231 

metaphysical  or  logical  subtleties.  He  is  the 
antithesis  of  Coleridge,  who  combined  in  so  singular 
a  degree  the  poetical  and  the  reasoning  faculties. 
Coleridge  could  keep  the  two  faculties  apart; 
and  his  poems — the  really  exquisite  poems,  at 
least — are  as  free  from  any  admixture  of  philo- 
sophy as  if  he  had  never  heard  of  "object"  and 
"subject."  The  cause  of  the  difference  is  simple, 
namely,  that  Wordsworth's  philosophy,  such  as  it 
is,  represents  intuitions  or  convictions;  it  em- 
bodies his  faith  as  to  the  world  and  human  nature, 
without  reference  to  the  logical  justifications. 
Coleridge  held,  as  a  metaphysician  naturally 
does,  that  his  philosophic  creed  required  to  be 
justified  by  a  whole  apparatus  of  dialectics  which 
would  be  out  of  place  in  verse.  Whether  this 
apparatus  was  really  the  base  of  his  convictions, 
or  represents  the  after-thought  by  which  he 
justified  them,  does  not  matter.  Wordsworth, 
in  any  case,  is  content  to  expound  his  philosophy 
as  self-evident.  He  speaks  as  from  inspiration, 
not  as  the  builder  of  a  logical  system.  One 
result  was  that  when  he  tried  to  argue,  he  got, 
as  he  admits  with  his  usual  naivett,  "endlessly 
perplexed "  (p.  307).  He  wanted  "formal  proof, " 
and  could  not  find  it.  He  did  not,  of  course, 
join  the  "scoffers";  a  sufficient  reason  was,  as  the 
scoffers  would  say,  that  he  was  incompetent  to 


232         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

appreciate  them.  When,  in  the  Excursion,  he 
audaciously  calls  Voltaire  "dull,"  he  is  tacitly 
admitting  that  he  could  never  see  a  joke.  Any- 
how, after  bothering  himself  with  metaphysics  till 
his  head  turned,  he  fortunately  resolved  to  be 
a  poet;  and  here  had  a  short  cut  to  his  conclu- 
sions. I  do  not  mean  to  scoff  at  Wordsworth. 
My  own  belief  is  that  he  took  more  simply  and 
openly  the  path  which  most  of  us  take,  and  that 
impartial  inquiry  with  him,  as  with  nearly  every 
one,  meant  simply  discovering  what  he  had  really 
thought  all  along. 

Another  influence  must  be  noticed  here.  M. 
Legouis  dwells  upon  Wordsworth's  relations  to 
Godwin.  There  is  not  much  direct  evidence 
upon  this  matter ;  and  I  have  some  doubt  whether 
M.  Legouis  does  not  rather  overstate  the  case. 
But,  in  the  main,  I  think  that  he  is  substantially 
right.  That  is  to  say,  when  Wordsworth  set  about 
what  he  called  thinking,  I  suppose  that  Godwin's 
philosophy  would  represent  political  theory  for 
him.  Godwin's  philosophy  was  transmuted  by 
Shelley  into  something  very  exquisite  if  rather 
nonsensical,  and  probably  is  now  remembered, 
when  remembered  at  all,  chiefly  for  that  reason. 
Hazlitt,  however,  in  his  slashing  way  tells  us  that 
Godwin  was  at  this  period  the  "very  god  of  our 
idolatry" ;  Tom  Paine  was  considered  for  a  time  a 


Wordsworth's  Youth  233 

fool  to  him ;  Paley  an  old  woman ;  Edmund  Burke 
"a  flashy  sophist."1  Wordsworth,  in  particular, 
he  adds,  told  a  student  to  "throw  aside  his  books 
of  chemistry  and  read  Godwin  on  Necessity"! 
Both  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  were  in  various 
ways  connected  with  the  Godwin  circle.  Now, 
Godwinism,  presented  as  the  gospel  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, indicates  Wordsworth's  difficulty  with  curious 
precision.  Godwin,  of  course,  appeals  to  Reason, 
and  in  general  terms  Wordsworth,  like  every  one 
on  his  side  of  the  question,  agreed.  Their  essential 
aim  was  to  get  rid  of  superstition  and  obsolete 
tradition.  Godwin,  too,  held  Reason  to  be  a  peace- 
able goddess,  whose  only  weapon  was  persuasion, 
not  force.  Godwin  never  erred  from  excess  of  pas- 
sion, and  was  by  no  means  the  kind  of  wood  of 
which  martyrs  or  fanatics  are  made.  Man,  he 
thought,  was  perfectible,  and  a  little  calm  argu- 
ment would  make  him  perfect.  So  far  Words- 
worth might  agree  during  his  early  enthusiasm. 
The  people,  freed  from  the  domination  of  their 
false  guides,  were  to  come  to  their  senses  and 
establish  the  reign  of  peace  and  liberty.  But 
Godwin  went  a  step  further.  Reason,  according 
to  him,  leads  straight  to  anarchy.  Rulers,  of 
course,  will  not  be  wanted  when  men  are  perfectly 
reasonable.  But  moreover,  rules  in  general  will 

i  Spirit  of  the  Age,  p.  33. 


234          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

not  be  wanted.  Men  will  not  tie  their  hands  by 
custom  or  prejudice.  They  will  act  in  each  case 
for  the  best,  that  is,  for  the  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number,  without  slavery  to  formulas. 
His  political  ideal  is,  therefore,  individualism, 
or  atomism ;  the  doctrine  of  liberty  raised  to  the 
highest  terms.  Thus,  for  example,  marriage  is 
an  absurdity.  If  two  people  agree  to  live  to- 
gether, they  are  "unreasonable"  to  enslave  them- 
selves to  a  tie  which  may  become  irksome.  They 
should  be  free  to  part  at  any  moment.  Society 
should  be  nothing  but  an  aggregate  of  independent 
units,  bound  together  by  no  rules  whatever.  A 
rule  should  never  survive  its  reason,  and  the  only 
reason  for  a  rule  is  the  calculation  that  it  will 
make  us  happy. 

The  doctrine  had  an  apparent  consistency,  at 
least,  which  served  to  show  Wordsworth  whither 
he  was  going.  Two  curious  poems  of  this  period 
illustrate  his  feelings.  After  leaving  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  Wordsworth  had  rambled  over  Salisbury 
Plain  and  been  profoundly  impressed  by  the 
scenery.  There,  too,  he  had  apparently  heard  the 
story  which  is  told  in  one  of  the  last  Ingoldsby 
Legends.  In  I786,1  one  Jarvis  Matcham  had 
been  startled  by  a  thunderstorm,  and  confessed  to 

>The  story,  which   Barham  says  came  to  him  from   Sir 
Walter  Scott,  is  told  in  the  New  Annual  Register  for  1786. 


Wordsworth's  Youth  235 

a  companion  that  he  had  committed  a  murder 
("scuttled  a  poor  little  drummer-boy's  nob, "  as 
Barham  puts  it)  some  years  before.  In  Words- 
worth's version,  the  murderer  is  not  a  "blood- 
thirsty swab, ' '  but  an  amiable  person,  who  "would 
not  have  robbed  the  raven  of  its  food. "  He  had 
been  seized  by  a  press-gang,  and,  finding  on  his 
return  that  his  family  were  in  distress,  had  robbed 
and  murdered  a  miscellaneous  traveller  for  theii 
benefit;  an  act  possibly  excusable  on  Godwin's 
principles.  With  this  story  Wordsworth  com- 
bined another  of  the  "female  vagrant,"  whose 
cruel  sufferings  were  due  to  her  husband  having 
been  forced  into  the  army.  This  represents,  as 
he  tells  us,  foreboding  thoughts  which  came  to  him 
when  watching  the  British  Fleet  at  Spithead. 
He  foresaw  that  the  war  was  leading  to  "  misery 
beyond  all  possible  calculation."  Wretched  men 
were  being  forcibly  torn  from  their  families,  and 
plunged  not  only  into  misery,  but  into  crime. 
The  horrors  of  war  are  bad  enough,  but  they 
involve  also  a  difficult  moral  problem  when  the 
victims  not  only  suffer,  but  are  demoralised :  and 
painful  forebodings  were  combined  with  bewilder- 
ment as  to  ethical  puzzles.  Was  the  murderer 
most  to  blame,  or  the  tyrants  who  had  crushed  his 
life?  and  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  Providential 
government  under  which  such  things  are  possible 


236         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

and  even  natural?  The  moral  problem  is  more 
prominent  in  the  curious  tragedy  The  Borderers. 
That  tragedy,  received  with  rapture  by  his  new 
friend  Coleridge,  was  written,  he  says,  to  be  read, 
not  to  be  acted;  and,  like  most  tragedies  so 
written,  has  almost  failed  to  find  readers,  as  it 
quite  failed  to  find  actors.  Had  he  written  it 
later,  he  says,  he  should  have  introduced  a  more 
complex  plot  and  a  greater  variety  of  characters. 
He  might  have  tried;  but  nobody  could  have  a 
less  dramatic  genius  than  Wordsworth,  who  could 
never  describe  any  character  except  his  own.  The 
Borderers,  however,  is  noticeable  here  only  as  an 
illustration  of  his  state  of  mind.  It  was  meant  to 
embody  a  theory,  upon  which  at  the  time  he 
wrote  a  prose  essay,  namely,  how  we  are  to 
explain  the  "  apparently  motiveless  actions  of  bad 
men."  His  villain  is  a  man  who  erroneously 
supposed  that  he  was  joining  in  an  act  of  justice 
when  he  was  really  becoming  accomplice  in  an 
atrocious  crime.  Having  found  out  his  mistake 
he  resolves,  not  to  repent,  but  in  future  to  com- 
mit any  number  of  crimes  on  his  own  account. 
Conscience  is  a  nuisance  and  remorse  a  mistake. 
The  villain  not  only  acts  upon  his  principles,  but 
endeavours  to  subject  the  hero  of  the  piece  to  a 
similar  process  of  conversion.  The  hero,  in  fact, 
is  induced  by  his  machinations  to  cause  the  death 


Wordsworth's  Youth  237 

of   a   virtuous   old   gentleman,    under   specially 
atrocious  circumstances.     The  villain  calculates 
that,  having  thus  become  an  unconscious  sinner, 
the  hero  will  in  future  be  a  systematic  and  de- 
liberate sinner,  and  a  convenient  subordinate.     I 
do  not  feel  much  clearer,  I  confess,  as  to  apparently 
motiveless  actions  after  reading  the  play  than 
before.     The  villain's  sophistry  does  not  strike 
me  as  very  plausible,  nor  his  motives,  on  his  own 
showing,  as  very  intelligible.     Wordsworth's  own 
state  of  mind,  however,  is  clearer.     He  had,  he 
says,  seen  many  such  cases  during  the  advance 
of  the   French   Revolutionists    "to  the  extreme 
of  wickedness."     Men  are  led  into  crime  from 
originally  good  motives,  and  there  is  then  no  limit 
to  the  consequent  "hardening  of  the  heart  and 
perversion  of  the  understanding."     Robespierre, 
whose  fall  had  rejoiced  him,  had  started  from  most 
benevolent  principles,  and  ended  by  becoming  the 
typical  monster.     The  temporary  success,  too,  of 
the  villainy,  and  the  perversion  of  power  granted 
in  the  name  of  human  liberty  to  a  crushing  and 
bloodthirsty  tyranny,  were  bewildering.  "Often, " 
says  Coleridge  in  The  Friend,  "have  I  reflected 
with  awe  on  the  great  and  disproportionate  power 
which  an  individual  of  no  extraordinary  talents  or 
attainments  may  exert,  by  merely  throwing  off  all 
restraints  of  conscience."    And  what,  he  adds, 


238          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

must  not  be  the  power  of  an  individual  of  consum- 
mate wickedness  who  can  organise  all  the  forces 
of  a  nation?  Robespierre,  or  Napoleon,  would 
have  found  conscience  a  great  impediment ;  God- 
win's theory  seemed  to  Wordsworth  to  make  it 
superfluous.  Godwin  would  suppress  conscience 
and  substitute  calculation.  No  doubt  for  him  the 
calculation  was  to  include  the  happiness  of  all. 
Only,  when  you  have  suppressed  all  ties  and 
associations,  it  becomes  rather  puzzling  to  say 
what  reason  you  have  for  caring  for  others.  If 
husbands  and  wives  may  part  when  it  is  agreeable 
to  both,  will  they  not  part1  when  it  is  agreeable  to 
either?  If  a  statesman  may  break  through  all 
laws  when  they  oppose  a  useful  end,  will  he  not 
most  simply  define  useful  as  useful  to  himself? 
Take  leave,  in  other  words,  of  all  prejudices  and 
all  respect  for  social  bonds,  and  are  you  not  on 
the  high  road  to  become  such  a  one  as  the  villain 
of  The  Borderers?  These  are,  in  fact,  the  problems 
which  Wordsworth  tells  us  brought  him  into  end- 
less perplexity.  What,  after  all,  wras  the  mean- 
ing of  right  and  wrong,  and  obligation?  (P.  307). 
What  was  the  lordly  "attribute"  of  free-will 
but  a  mockery,  if  we  have  neither  any  real  know- 
ledge of  what  will  do  good,  nor  of  why  we  should 
do  it?  He  could,  he  says,  "unsoul  by  syllogistic 
words"  the  "mysteries  of  being "  which  make  "of 


Wordsworth's  Youth  239 

the  whole  human  race  one  brotherhood."     It  was 
in  the  name  of  the  brotherhood  that  the  revolu- 
tionary teachers  appealed  to  him;    and  yet  God- 
win, as  a  prophet,  ended  by  dissolving  all  society 
into  a  set  of  unconnected  atoms.      M.  Legouis 
remarks    that   Wordsworth  "purged   himself   of 
his  pessimism"  after  the  fashion  of  Goethe,  by 
putting  it  into   a  book.    This,  however,  must 
not  be  taken  to  imply  that  Wordsworth  ever 
shared  the  atrocious  sentiments  of  his  imaginary 
villain.     The  Borderers  naturally  recalls  Schiller's 
Robbers,   which   had  just  been   translated,   and 
was    not    without   influence    upon  Wordsworth. 
Wordsworth's   villain   and   hero   are   contrasted 
much   as    Schiller's   two   Moors.     But   it  could 
never  have  been  expected  that  any  young  English- 
man would,  like  the  alleged  German  baron,  have 
taken  to  the  highway  to  realise  Wordsworth's 
imaginary  personages.     The  Borderers  is  not  only 
without  the  imaginative  vigour  which  at  the  time 
made  Schiller's  bombast  excusable— the  product 
of  a  contemplative  speculation  instead  of  youthful 
passion,— but  it  is  plain  enough  that  the  poet 
loathes  his  villain  too  much  to  allow  him  the  least 
attractiveness.     The  play  represents  the  kind  of 
moral  spasm  by  which  a  man  repels  a  totally  un- 
congenial  element  of  thought.     He  had  found 
that  what  he  took  for  a  wholesome  food  contained 


240          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

a  deadly  poison,  and  to  become  conscious  of  its 
nature  is  to  expel  it  with  disgust. 

What  was  the  influence,  then,  which  opened 
Wordsworth's  eyes  and  caused  what  seemed,  at 
least,  to  be  a  change  of  front?  He  answers  that 
question  himself  by  referring  to  two  influences. 
The  first  was  the  influence  of  the  devoted  sister 
who  now  came  to  live  with  him.  She  pointed  out 
to  him  that  his  "office  upon  earth"  was  to  be  a 
poet.  She  persuaded  him,  one  may  say,  to  cease 
to  bother  himself  with  Godwin's  metaphysics,  with 
puzzles  as  to  Free-will  and  Necessity  and  the 
ground  of  moral  obligation,  and  to  return  to  his 
early  aspirations.  If  this  bit  of  advice  fell  in  with 
his  own  predisposition,  the  influence  of  Dorothy 
Wordsworth  was  something  far  more  than  could 
be  summed  up  in  any  advice,  however  judicious. 
It  meant,  in  brief,  that  Wordsworth  had  by  his 
side  a  woman  of  high  enthusiasm  and  cognate 
genius,  thoroughly  devoted  to  him  and  capa- 
ble of  sharing  his  inspiration ;  and  that  thus  the 
"undomestic  wanderer"  was  to  be  bound  by  one 
of  the  sweetest  and  purest  of  human  ties.  His 
early  affections,  hitherto  deprived  of  any  outlet, 
could  now  revive,  and  his  profound  sense  of  their 
infinite  value  encouraged  him  to  break  the  chains 
of  logic,  or  rather  to  set  down  the  logic  as  sophistry. 
Godwinism  meant  a  direct  assault  upon  the 


Wordsworth's  Youth  241 

family  tie;  and  that  tie  was  now  revealing  its 
value  by  direct  experience  of  its  power.  The 
friendship  with  Coleridge,  then  in  the  full  flush 
of  youthful  genius,  and  the  most  delightful  and 
generous  of  admirers,  came  to  encourage  the 
growth  of  such  feelings ;  while  Coleridge's  mystical 
tendencies  in  philosophy  probably  suggested 
some  solution  of  the  Godwin  "syllogising."  Per- 
haps, after  all,  Godwin  might  be  a  humbug,  and 
the  true  key  to  the  great  problems  was  to  be  found 
in  Germany,  where  both  the  j^oung  men  were 
soon  to  go  for  initiation.  Meanwhile,  however, 
another  influence  was  affecting  Wordsworth. 
His  sister  had  led  him  back  to  nature,  and  he  now 
found  that  nature  should  include  the  unsophisti- 
cated human  being.  He  rambled  as  of  old,  and 
in  his  rambles  found  that  the  "  lonely  roads  were 
open  schools"  in  which  he  might  study  the  pas- 
sions and  thoughts  of  unsophisticated  human 
beings.  The  result  was  remarkable.  He  found 
nobility  and  sense  in  the  humble  friends.  The 
"wealthy  few"  see  by  "artificial  lights,"  and 
"neglect  the  universal  heart."  Nature  is  equally 
corrupted  in  the  "  close  and  overcrowded  haunts 
of  cities."  But  in  the  poor  men,  who  reminded 
him  of  his  early  friends,  of  the  schoolmaster 
"Matthew,"  and  old  Dame  Tyson,  he  found  the 
voice  of  the  real  man;  and  observed  "how  oft 

YOL.  I.  — 16 


242  Studies  of  a  Biographer 

high  service  is  performed  within"  men's  hearts 
which  resemble  not  pompous  temples,  but  the 
"mere  mountain  chapel."  Was  not  this  to  go 
back  to  Rousseau,  to  denunciations  of  luxury 
and  exaltations  of  the  man  of  nature?  Words- 
worth had  been  converted  to  the  Revolution  by 
the  sight  of  the  poor  peasant  girl,  the  victim 
of  feudal  privileges — why  should  he  renounce  the 
Revolution  by  force  of  sympathy  with  the  same 
class  in  England? 

Before  answering,  I  may  remark  that  in  any 
case  the  impression  was  doep  and  lasting.  It 
shows  how  Wordsworth  reached  his  famous  theory 
that  the  language  of  poetry  should  be  indistin- 
guishable from  that  of  ordinary  life.  That  is 
merely  the  literary  translation  of  his  social  doc- 
trine. He  and  Coleridge  have  both  told  us  how 
they  agreed  to  divide  labour,  and,  while  Coleridge 
was  to  give  human  interest  to  the  romantic, 
Wordsworth  was  to  show  the  romance  which  is 
incorporated  in  commonplace  things.  Words- 
worth proceeded  to  write  the  poems  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Lyrical  Ballads;  and,  if  his  theory 
tripped  him  up  sometimes,  wrote  some  of  those 
exquisite  and  pathetic  passages  which  amply 
redeem  intervening  tracts  of  quaintly  prosaic 
narrative  and  commonplace  moralising — some 
of  the  passages,  in  short,  which  make  one  love 


Wordsworth's  Youth  243 

Wordsworth,  and  feel  his  unequalled  power  of 
soothing  and  humanising  sorrow.  Simon  Lee — 
to  mention  only  one — was  the  portrait  of  an  old 
man  at  Alfoxden.  If  you  are  apt  to  yawn  in 
the  middle,  you  recognise  the  true  Wordsworth  at 
the  conclusion: 

I  've  heard  of  hearts  unkind,  kind  deeds 

With  coldness  still  returning; 
Alas  !  the  gratitude  of  man 

Hath  oftener  left  me  mourning  ! 

I  must  not,  however,  speak  of  Wordsworth's 
pathetic  power,  which,  in  its  way,  seems  to  me  to 
be  unapproachable.  Henceforward,  he  found  in 
such  themes  the  inspiration  of  his  truest  poetry. 
The  principle  is  given  in  the  Song  at  the  Feast  at 
Brougham  Castle,  where  he  says  of  the  shepherd 
lord: 

Love  had  he  found  in  huts  where  poor  men  lie, 
His  daily  teachers  had  been  fields  and  rills, 

and  in  countless  other  utterances  of  the  same 
sentiment.  A  change,  indeed,  took  place,  of 
which  M.  Legouis  gives  a  curious  illustration. 
About  the  beginning  of  1798,  Wordsworth,  as  he 
shows,  wrote  the  story  of  the  ruined  cottage  which 
is  now  imbedded  in  the  fifth  book  of  the  Excursion. 
M.  Legouis  translates  the  story,  omitting  the 
subsequent  interpolations.  Coleridge,  long  after- 


244         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

wards,  declared  it  to  be  the  finest  poem  of  the 
same  length  in  our  language.  The  poem,  as 
originally  written,  is  a  painfully  pathetic  story  of 
undeserved  misery  patiently  borne,  and  ending  in 
the  destruction  of  a  peasant's  household.  In  the 
later  form  the  narrator  has  to  interrupt  himself  by 
apologies  for  the  sadness  of  the  story  and  edifying 
remarks  upon  the  ways  of  Providence.  Words- 
worth, somehow  or  other,  had  become  reconciled. 
The  change  was  not  the  abandonment  of  his  old 
sentiments,  but  the  indication  that  they  were  again 
coming  to  the  surface  and  casting  off  a  hetero- 
geneous element.  The  superficial  change,  indeed, 
was  marked  enough.  To  Wordsworth,  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  now  represented  not  progress 
— the  natural  expansion  of  his  sympathies — but 
social  disintegration  and  the  attack  upon  all  that 
he  held  to  be  the  most  valuable.  The  secret  is 
revealed  by  his  remarkable  letter  to  Fox  in  1801. 
There  he  calls  the  statesman's  attention  to  two 
of  his  most  significant  poems,  The  Brothers  and 
Michael.  These  poems  are  intended  to  describe 
the  domestic  affections  "as  they  exist  among  a  class 
of  men  now  almost  confined  to  the  North  of  Eng- 
land. ' '  He  observes  that  the  little  holdings  of  the 
"statesmen"  serve  to  strengthen  the  family  tie,  and 
thus  protect  a  "fountain  of  affection  pure  as  his 
heart  was  intended  for."  This  class,  he  adds,  is 


Wordsworth's  Youth  245 

rapidly  disappearing,  and  its  disappearance  indi- 
cates the  greatest  of  our  national  dangers.  These 
most  touching  poems,  written  in  1800,  represent 
Wordsworth's  final  solution  of  his  problem,  and 
embody  a  sentiment  which  runs  through  his  later 
work.  Its  meaning  is  clear  enough.  Wordsworth 
had  begun  to  feel  that  Godwin's  anti-social  logic 
had  an  embodiment  in  facts.  What  he  now  saw 
behind  it  was  not  Rousseau's  sentimentalism,  but 
the  harsh  doctrinaire  system  of  the  economists. 
The  theorists  who  professed  to  start  from  the 
rights  of  man  were  really  attacking  the  essential 
social  duties.  Godwinism  meant  the  "indi- 
vidualism' '  of  the  later  economists.  Individualism 
meant  the  reckless  competition  and  race  for 
wealth  which  were  destroying  the  very  frame- 
work of  peaceful  society.  The  English  Radical 
represented  Adam  Smith;  and  Wordsworth  now 
perceived 

how  dire  a  thing 

Is  worshipped  in  that  idol  proudly  named 
The  "  Wealth  of  Nations." 

The  evils  which  now  impressed  him  were  the 
absorption  ol  small  freeholds  by  large  estates,  and 
the  growth  of  the  factory  system  in  the  place  of 
domestic  manufacture.  He  dwells  upon  these  evils 
in  the  Excursion  in  language  which  gives  a  fore- 


246         Studies  of  a  Biographer 

taste  of  much  modern   Socialism.     Wordsworth 
had  plenty  of  allies  in  this  view  of  the  case. 
While  he  was  renouncing  the  principle  of  individ- 
ualism, Owen  was  beginning  to  put  in  practice  the 
schemes  suggested  by  the  same  evils,  and  leading 
to  his  later  Socialism.     Cobbett  was  lamenting  the 
demoralisation  of  the  agricultural  labourer,  and 
taking  up  his  curious  position  of  Radicalism  in- 
spired by  regret  for  the  good  "old  times."    There 
is  no  need,  at  the  present  day,  for  expounding 
such  views  or  explaining  why  it  should  appear  to 
Wordsworth  that    the   revolutionary  movement 
which  had  started  by  taking  up  the  cause  of  the 
poor  had  ended  by  assailing  the  very  basis  of 
order  and  morality.     The  foreign  developments, 
the   growth   of   a   military   despotism,   and   the 
oppression  of  Switzerland  by  France  in  the  name 
of  fraternity,  no  doubt  seemed  clear  justifications 
of  his  attitude.     But  he  had  sufficient  reasons  at 
home.     The  Radical,  with  whom  he  had  been  al- 
lied, was  attacking  what  he  held  dearest, — not 
only  destroying  the  privileges  of  nobles,  but  break- 
ing up  the  poor  man's  home,  and  creating  a  vast 
"proletariat" — a  mass  of   degraded   humanity — 
instead   of   encouraging  "  plain   living   and   high 
thinking,"  and  destroying  the  classes  whose  sim- 
plicity  and  independence  had  made  them  the 
soundest  element  of  mutual  prosperity.     I  do  not, 


Wordsworth's  Youth  247 

of  course,  inquire  how  far  Wordsworth's  estimate 
of  the  situation  was  sound.  I  only  say  that  this 
explains  how  he  reached  it  naturally  and  consis- 
tently. It  was,  as  I  have  said,  anything  but  a 
purely  logical  process,  though  it  may  be  said  that 
it  was  guided  by  an  implicit  logic.  It  really 
meant  that  he  became  aware  of  the  fact  that  his 
instincts  had  led  him  into  the  camp  of  his  real 
enemies.  When  he  realised  the  fact,  he  stuck  to 
his  instincts,  and,  indeed,  regarded  them  as  due 
to  divine  inspiration.  They  were  attacked  by 
the  revolutionary  party.  He  would  find  in  them 
not  only  the  source  of  happiness,  but  the  ultimate 
revelation  of  religion  and  morality: 

The  primal  duties  shine  aloft  like  stars ; 
The  charities  that  soothe  and  heal  and  bless 
Are  scattered  at  the  feet  of  men  like  flowers. 

Wordsworth's  ultimate  doctrine,  one  may  say, 
is  the  duty  of  cherishing  the  "intimations  of  im- 
mortality" which  visit  our  infancy,  to  transmute 
sorrow  into  purifying  and  strengthening  influence: 
and  so  to  "build  up  our  moral  being."  In  his 
particular  case,  this,  no  doubt,  meant  that  the  boy 
of  Hawkshead  was  to  be  the  father  of  the  man  who 
could  not  be  permanently  held  by  the  logical  toils 
of  Godwin.  It  meant,  too,  a  certain  self-com- 
placency and  an  optimistic  tendency  which,  how- 


248          Studies  of  a  Biographer 

ever  pleasant,  dulled  his  poetic  fervour,  and  made 
him  acquiesce  in  much  that  he  would  once  have 
rejected.     But  it  was  also  the  source  of  a  power 
which  should  be  recognised  by  men  of  a  different 
belief.     When  J.  S.  Mill  went  through  the  mental 
crisis  described  in  his  Autobiography,  he  thought 
that  he  had  injured  his  powers  of  feeling  by  the 
habit  of  constant  analysis.     He  had  so  destroyed 
the  associations   and  with  them  the  sympathies 
which  make  life  desirable.     In  this  state  of  mind 
he  found  an  admirable  restorative  in  Wordsworth's 
poetry.     "Analysis"  represents  just  the  intellect- 
ual habit  which  Wordsworth  denounces.     It  is  the 
state  of  mind  in  which  his  imaginary  man  of  science 
botanises  on  his  mother's  grave ;  picks  the  flowers 
to   pieces   and   drops   the   sentiment.     Mill,    ac- 
cordingly, tried  and  tried,  he  says,  successfully, 
to   adopt  Wordsworth's    method;      and  to  find 
happiness  in  "tranquil  contemplation,"  while  yet 
strengthening  his  interest  in  the  "common  feelings 
and  common  destiny  of  human  beings,"     With 
"culture  of  this  sort,"  he  says,  "there  was  no- 
thing to  dread  from  the  most  confirmed  habit  of 
analysis  "  (146-9).     If  Mill's  great  aim  was  to  "  hu- 
manise" political  economy,  he  drew  from  Words- 
worth encouragement  for  the  task.     This  point  of 
contact  between  two  men,  each  of  whom  repre- 
sents much  that  was  most  antipathetic  to  the 


Wordsworth's  Youth  249 

other,  is  significant.  It  suggests  much  upon  which 
I  cannot  dwell;  but  it  may  hint  to  the  Radical 
that  Wordsworth,  in  giving  up  a  doctrine  which 
he  never  really  assimilated,  was  faithful  to  con- 
victions which,  partial  or  capable  of  perversion  as 
they  may  be,  represent  a  very  important  aspect 
of  truth. 

END   OF   VOLUME  I. 


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